A Doomed Existence
by Anime-Ronin
Summary: Xander went as a soldier on Halloween … but this soldier has left more than a few things behind, and he’s used to dealing with demons. FINISHED.
1. Chapter 1 revised

A Doomed Existence

Author: Anime Ronin

Rating: R (nertz to the other system)

Summary: Xander went as a soldier on Halloween … but this soldier has left more than a few things behind, and he's used to dealing with demons.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

AN: This is an amalgamation of the book series and the PC games – some facts will be right, some will not, so please bear with me.

AN2: I plan to only make this a one-shot, but we'll see where it mutates to.

1/1 (?)

(November 1, 1997)

His hands slid the components into place with the practiced ease of someone who had been trained over hours, days, weeks, even, to assemble the assault shotgun that had somehow made it's way into reality, but in all reality he'd never see the weapon before the previous night – he had been roped into taking kids out Trick-Or-Treating by the Troll, Quark himself, the late-yet-not-lamented Principal Snyder, as had both Buffy and Willow, and they had gone along with it in order to stay out of more trouble than they were bound for in his book. They had gone of Ethan Rayne's shop to go get costumes, or in his case, parts for his costume, and the man had sold them enspelled items that would, later on that night, turn them into said costumes – in Willow's case, she was a ghost, in Buffy's case she had been turned into a pain-in-the-ass noblewoman who was scared of everything, including her own shadow, but he was different.

He'd planned to go as a soldier, nothing really special, just a generic soldier, but Ethan Rayne, after a vague mention of G-man's name, had pressed into his hands a plastic pistol, an assault shogun, a backpack, a bandoleer and some cool body armor with gauntlets that was actually made of some metal plates sewn into a leather backing, banded mail, Ethan had called it, for the exact amount of money he'd had on his person at the time. At that point, Xander should have known that something was up, but he was too jazzed at the thought of screwing the guy over for obviously-superior stuff, and now he was kicking himself for that even as he finished assembling the shotgun and loaded the drum magazine, working the action to load a 12-gauge round into the chamber before safteying the weapon and putting it aside, looking over at the banded mail.

The armor and gauntlets didn't look like much, but they had saved their collective asses last night, several times in fact as it somehow shot out some kind of light all around him for about fifty feet, a light that was dangerous for vampires, including one certain vamp who had been sniffing around Buffy WAY too much for Xander's own liking, and that wasn't all – the gauntlets actually grew wooden stakes that could be snapped off and used as weapons, and Solider Boy had, after some initial freaking out, explanations from Willow, swearing and blowing things apart with his pistol and shotgun, gotten into it, too. He'd have to get G-man to tell him what the hell it was, he decided as he looked at the gauntlet on his arm and watched as it grew another wooden stake – it was way too good to have it around and not know what it really was, and what it would cost him in the long run.

Soldier Boy wasn't real, yet the memories that were wracking through his mind told Xander otherwise – battlefields on Earth, on Mars and on Mars' moons (though it, in REAL life, did not have a pair moons named Phoebes and Demons) had marched through his dreams, turning them into nightmares of human blood and of faces he never knew, the roar of weapons fire from the previous night mingled with the sounds of screams from demonic things that should not have ever existed, the smell of blood, sweat and cordite thick in his nose and even the slight tingle that came from the fact that all of it, the memories, nightmares, even that one pleasant time with Arlene, was fake, nothing more than a game for the computer and a set of books. All of this went through his mind as he fastened the bandoleer across the armor and then loaded and holstered the pistol he'd also gotten from Ethan's at his side, a pistol that had ended Rayne's existence the previous night, another memory, another face, but this one was impossible to forget.

Finally he ran his arm through the sling he'd attached to the assault shotgun, a big, blocky black looking thing that looked like an M-16 on steroids, one that fired 12-gauge rounds out of a 20-round drum magazine in either semi-automatic or full automatic (a function that had left his wrist hurting the previous night, given the amount of sheer power the weapon put out on full auto), had an under-mounted flashlight of some kind and one that could, if it happened to be in range, easily take off a vampire's head with a single caress of the trigger. He'd have to rip it apart completely in order to figure out how to make replacement parts, because he would not let such a useful weapon go to waste, not on the Hellmouth, he decided as he pulled on Deadboy's long black jacket, the only thing left of the vampire after the last burst of light his armor had produced.

"You are Alexander Harris, of Sunnydale, California," he reminded himself as he went towards his window, off to meet Giles and the other Scoobs at the Library, "Not Lt. Flynn Taggart, formerly of the Marines Light Drop Fox Company, now of the Citizens of State …Christ, where in the hell is Arlene when I need her to kick me in the ass?" Xander shook his head, remembering the feisty redheaded best friend, combat survivor, bedmate and pain-in-the-ass and how she had died somewhat ignominiously of old age before going out of his window and dropping off of the roof of the porch. He would run to the Library, as a start to his new training regimen, because he was VERY out of shape by Soldier Boy's standards … and now his own standards.

AN: Just a quickie – should I continue with it? If not, don't bother posting it on XZ site, please.

AN2: Yes, the Armor in this fic exists – dnd Armor and Equipment Guide+3 Banded Mail, named Vampire Hunter. On command you get Protection from Evil and Daylight spells, and once a day you can cast Starburst on a 15th level Cleric scale – protective symbols from Good deities, a high neck of thick leather, Vampire (and only Vampire) energy drains happen at a negative 2 level, and the armbands of the gauntlets produce stakes that can be broken off and used (+1 weapons at 1d3, threat range 19 – 20, piercing), but if broken off, stakes take a full round to grow. Any non-Good character who wears it takes a negative 1 level that, when the armor is removed, is returned – cannot be returned any other way, even with a Restoration spell.


	2. Chapter 2

2?

AN: Yes, there are games out there, put out by ID software (they are a touch hard to miss, so go to the game store and ask the gurus there – if they are any kind of guru, they'll be able to give you a dissertation about the game) and a series of books, written by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver, four of them if I remember correctly, put out by Pocket Books in the mid-late 90's.

AN2: Sorry about the confusion in the previous chapter – I flat forgot about the second moon for some reason, and I meant to say that in Xander's world there were no moons around Mars. Again, I am sorry for the confusion.

(Sunnydale Library)

Giles watched as both Buffy and Willow gaped in horror at Xander, who was now returning from the weapons cage, where Xander had gone to store his assault shotgun, his very REAL assault shotgun, and he did his best to compose himself – while the boy had been known to annoy him to no end, if only a tenth of what he had said about this 'Soldier' were true, Xander's mental state … would be shaky, at best, "Xander … I don't mean to imply that you may be blowing these memories out of proportion, but can you give me some kind of description about this … place your Soldier was, and whom he was, as well?"

Xander nodded, "Okay, fair enough – Flynn Taggart joined the Marines just out of high school and was put into Light Drop Infantry, Fox Company not long after that; he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, or the fastest, or the most coordinated, but he was persistent, according to his Gunny, and never gave up. He and Fox Company were posted out in one of the Stans," Xander went on, squinting his eyes slightly, "one I'm not going to even attempt to pronounce, but it's part of the old USSR, and his prick of an LT gave an order to wax a whole bunch of non-combatants – Fly disobeyed and knocked the officer down, but not out, so he was put up on charges as soon as the corpses were 'misplaced' and sent to the UAC Mars base.

"Fly was there for a while, doing his best to stay out of trouble in the brig, and then the radios started going apeshit – someone had opened some kind of Gate that allowed demons to come from somewhere and start to take the place over." Xander closed his eyes a shivered violently this time, "The Marines and civvies there didn't stand a fucking chance and were slaughtered – lucky ones were killed, outright … the ones that weren't were re-worked into Zombies."

Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them, at a loss for words as Xander went on, his voice becoming cold with anger, hatred and loathing as the memories now flowed through his mind unbidden, "Fly … he did what he could, but there was only one other person on Mars and it's moons, Phobos and Demons, that was still alive, and that was Arlene, and after the two of them fired a lot of rounds, killed a lot of demons and damned near got killed a thousand times, they got to the transit area … but there was a problem that had caused the air to start leaking out of the atmosphere and into space. They built a rocket out of a message tube and, eventually, got back to Earth, found the Mormons out in Salt Lake City and eventually started to take back what was taken from them, or given away by some fucking pussies in DC."

"I say, Xander, watch your bloody language right now! There are ladies present," Giles snapped at him.

Xander just snorted, "Trust me, it gets worse, and I now know more ways and usages of the word 'Fuck' than you three could possible imagine – did you know it can be used as a verb, pronoun, noun and adjective?" Giles shot him a glare and he went on while both Buffy and Willow tried to out-blush each other, "Well, long and short of it was that Arlene got married to Big Al, Jill seemed to have some kind of hero-worship thing with us, Arlene and I got shot off into space with some nut-fuck Captain that went back with Al and … oh, four hundred some-odd years later, I … Fly is promoted to Lieutenant by the Citizens of State in order to get into the new Salt Lake City … or rather, where it used to be."

"So, those things made it to Earth?" He looked over at Buffy and she was still a touch pink around the ears, "How bad was it?"

He thought back to the briefings that Fly and Arlene had been given back on Hawaii, "Well, long and the short of it is that they had captured at least 80 of the major cities and countries, or just blew them to hell and back, and some jag-off scientists and researchers on Hawaii Base were trying to figure out what made them tick … and got a lot of people killed in the process."

"That … that doesn't sound like such a bad thing, Xander," Willow said to him, still blushing. "If they could find a way to stop them …"

Xander shook his head, "No, they had no idea what they were doing, Willow, no idea of security or what it took to stop these things – Scientists and researchers studying demons will only get a whole bunch of people very dead who don't need to be, in both my and Fly's opinions." Xander leaned back in his seat and sighed slightly, "And the worst part about the entire thing … it's plausible, the whole demon infestation thing, on a level that nobody will ever really understand. Sure, different demons, different theater of action … but it's going to end up with the same result – total destruction."

Silence reigned for several minutes, silence that Buffy broke while she watched Giles study the armor that'd been given to him for research, "Giles, can I try that on? I sorta remember what it did last night to those vampires and Angel …" her breathing hitched slightly at the mention of the now-dust vampire with a soul, but she went on, "and I want to see if I can get it to do that again."

Giles opened his mouth but was cut off by Xander, his tone flat and firm, "Not a good idea, Buffy."

"But made light! It dusted vampires, so it must be of the good," she whined.

Xander stood firm, "No – think about it, Buff; what if something goes wrong? What if it doesn't work for you? What if it reacts with your whole Slayer thing? Do you want to risk it?"

Buffy opened her mouth once and then closed it, opened it again but closed it again before sighing, "Xander, don't use logic on me – you know I don't like it." She then turned to Giles, who was putting his glasses back on his face, "Giles? Please? Can I wear it?"

"No, Buffy, Xander is quite right this time." Xander perked up at the magic words even as Giles looked at him, "Yes, Xander, I said you were right – until we know what this armor does, nobody will use it, regardless of how much whining you do, Buffy."

"Giles!" She was shocked at that he had called her on her whining, something he'd never done before.

He shook his head, "I'm sorry, Buffy, its just that I'm doing my best to get over what I found last night at Ethan's shop, not to mention what happened to Principal Snyder."

Willow perked up, though a touch sickly, "What happened?"

"Ethan was executed," came the response, but not from Giles. Xander's face was quite pale at this time as he went on, "I'm not sure you remember, Buffy, but when Fly went off to get some more ammo last night…"

(Flashback)

Fly shook his head even as he exited the sporting goods store – he had seen some weird shit before in his life, but this one ranked right up there, "Only in California could I get younger and still be in as much danger from demons." He'd run out of ammo for his assault shotgun after unloading two drums of ammo on some Mars demon wannabes that'd attacked him, and while he wasn't completely unarmed due to his pistol, he much liked the idea of his 12 gauge being primed and ready to go in case they ran across something bigger and meaner than a Pinky.

He smirked lightly, "Never thought I'd miss those bastards – at least I could shoot them." The annoying redhead, who also happened to be a ghost at this point, not to mention the best friend of the body he happened to be in, had raised nine different kinds of verbal hell at him for accidentally plugging some guy in a bad suit with over-sized ears that had changed them, yelling, but after that she'd been on his case about what he could and could not shoot. Even so, he'd still run out of ammo and had just resupplied his stock via slightly-illegal means and his now-loaded shotgun was now at his side, ready for action.

He humped it back to where he'd left the ghost and the simpering noblewoman, whom had called him a lout, a cad, an oaf and all sorts of things that, if Arlene had been there, would have had his buddy on her ass, howling in laughter, but stopped short when he came across a shop that was glowing slightly in the windows. Inside, a man was cackling while a stone head was glowing a sickly green, "Hey! What the hell's going on in here?"

The man, a thin, sickly-looking older guy, looked over and promptly dismissed him, "Go away, boy – I have much more chaos to get to tonight. This will be my," by this point, he shut up when he noticed that Fly'd leveled the shotgun at his chest.

"I would suggest you MAK time to talk to me, old man, and start making with some answers. What. The. HELL. Is. Going. On. Here?"

(End Flashback)

Xander shivered at the memories as they replayed over, and over, and over again, the shot, the smell, all of it, "He didn't make with the answer and then said that he wondered how well Arlene was doing – that pissed Fly off enough to shoot the guy."

Giles growled at him slightly, "Xander, if you … he … had not done that, I may have been able to end the spell quicker. As it stood, it took more than an hour for me to figure it out."

Xander shrugged his shoulders, "Sorry, Giles, but growling at me about it now won't bring anyone back from the dead – cold as a witch's tit, but it's the truth." Xander then sighed, "I'm going to have to work with this – Fly's vocabulary was … profane, to say the least."

"Quite."

(Later)

While both Willow and Giles researched the armor and the pictures on it, called Runes, according to Giles, Buffy amused herself with the practice dummy and thoughts of who was going to replace Snyder – there had been a big blow up about it when it was revealed that Xander had not only killed Ethan, but Snyder as well (though while the first wasn't Chaos Mage wasn't an accident, 'Quark', as Principal Snyder had gone as, was), about guns, how dangerous they were and how he was NOT going to use them, followed by a huge listing of how Xander WAS going to use the guns because A) he wasn't a Slayer, B) he didn't like the idea of not using every weapon they had at their disposal, and C) she wasn't in any position to give him any orders after how she had acted last night. She remembered every insult she'd thrown at him and Willow, calling him a cur and Willow a harlot, a strumpet, and worse to the point that Willow wasn't exactly talking with her after she'd finished mother hen-ing Xander to death.

She looked over at said male and saw him with his feet propped up on one chair to where they were elevated slightly as he did push ups in a slow, rhythmic pattern that didn't stop but once or twice every half hour; he'd muttered a few things about getting into shape and 'damned military protocol', but after that he'd started stretching out and then working out. He wasn't trying to impress her, either, as he hadn't even looked over at her once to see if she was checking him out, and that was exactly what she was doing in a non-romantic way – he'd changed, she could tell, from the previous day in that he was more forceful, less goofy, and hadn't rolled over for her when she wanted to wear the armor. In fact, she wasn't sure why, but he even looked a little different when he walked and even sat – less slumped, more … rigid, as if he were tense, at attention, and right now he was looking at her quizzically.

"Something wrong, Buff?"

She blinked and then blushed lightly, "Ah, no, Xand, nothing wrong, just thinking." He quirked his lips and opened his mouth, bus she shot him a glare, "And don't you dare tell me to not hurt myself."

Xander shook his head, going back to pushing himself up and down, "Wasn't going to say that."

She narrowed her eyes, "What were you going to say then?"

"I was going to ask if they were worth the penny I was going to offer for them."

She shrugged and walked over, taking a seat not five feet from him, "Well, I was just going to ask you how bad your memories were, about that place, Doom or whatever it's called."

"Mars, Phobos and Demons, Buffy," he said somewhat stiffly as he pressed himself up one last time before shifting feet and rolling forwards into a crouch that was turned to where he was on his back, ready to do sit ups, "and … they're bad."

She arched an eyebrow at him as she knelt down and held his feet, "How bad?"

He sat up smoothly and looked her right in the eye, allowing her to see the haunted look in his chocolate depths, "Let me put it to you this way – I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy, Buffy, alive or undead." He went back down and then came back up, but never said another thing for the rest of the hour.

AN: Okay, here's part two – group reactions will go on later, but I think that this is a good start to them. What do you boys and girls think? Reviews, please.


	3. Chapter 3

3?

AN: A little darker at the Harris Household part – nothing graphic, but just the air being cleared.

(November 2, 9 PM)

He still hurt from whatever the boy had done, in fact even his vampire healing wasn't going to help him as quickly as he would have liked, but unlike his grand-poof, at least he wasn't a pile of dust; Halloween was generally the one night out of the year that he stayed in, too damned hokey for his taste, but Spike had decided to go out on Dru's rantings and ravings about how the Slayer was going to be weak, and something a kitten with noisy claws. Of course, then he'd been caught up in the chaos that had happened and, subsequently, had been presented with an opportunity he had partaken of twice before, killing a Slayer … but then that damned boy showed up with that bloody shotgun and started shooting light out of his arse, some of that light actually toasted Peaches, though, so he could forgive the boy for that.

"Ohh, Spikey, my little kitty cat is out here, he is, and he's with the nasty Slayer and little tree, hiding his claws and prowling for little mice he is," Dru went on and on and ON about 'her little kitten', and while Spike was fairly sure she was truly insane, there were time past that she had shown that she was far too cunning and thinking to be completely insane, so he thought it might just be an act.

"Oh, is that so, Ducks?" He pulled her close and kissed her, dipping his hand into the front of her dress and squeezing her full, cold breast, "If it came down to him and me, who'd walk away?"

She pulled away and nipped at his lips, her dark eyes clouding slightly with lust, but she then frowned and her bottom lip began to quiver, "My little Spikey … you look all soot-covered, you do, all ashen … Kitten, you're all dusty, you are…" She closed her eyes and cocked her head off to the side, "Shhh, listen to the stars, my Spikey, they sing to me, they do…"

Spike stopped listening to her as she pronounced his fate, his mind easily decoding her nigh-prophecy of his destruction at the claws … er… hands of 'Kitten'; he'd been sired by her, and for some reason he could read her insane rantings for the truth that they were, and this time he truly wished he had not been able to, "Ducks … let's go back home – we can hunt another night."

Dru looked at him sadly, "But we'll miss Kitten, the little tree and the nasty Slayer, we will! Kitten has a prezzie for me, he does, and I so love my prezzies, all nice and juicy ones, like hearts and little kiddie eyeballs, I do."

Spike shook his head, grasping her arm, "No, Ducks, we're leaving."

She jerked her arm away from him, her eyes flashing slightly, "No, William, we are not." He backed up, his eyes wide as she used his real name, but also at the look of sanity in her eyes, sanity that quickly melted away as she smiled and began to sway to a song only she could here, "Shhh, Spikey … Kitten's here."

"Can I get a say on what you call me, Miss Clearly-insane-vampire-lady?" Spike turned at the voice he recognized as the Slayers, though at least this time she wasn't screeching like some damned banshee, and he saw her, a delectable little redhead clutching a cross and that boy, dressed in Peaches' long coat, his eyes flat and an odd grin on his face.

The female vampire, whom had been gorgeous when she was alive, he could tell, hissed at Buffy's response, so Xander couldn't help but quip, "Uh, Buff, I don't speak insane-ese, but I think that means 'no'."

Buffy nodded, pulling out her stake, "Yup; well, that or 'I like those shoes – I'd like a pair myself'."

Xander smirked somewhat, his left hand clutching the butt of the 9mm pistol he'd gained last night, "Somehow, I doubt it's the second, Buff." He looked the pair over and then noticed something, "Gah, not to sound like Cordy, but can you BE any more 80's? The Billy Idol look went out, like, ten years ago, easily, man."

"OY! Watch your mouth, brat, he's the one copying me!"

Xander opened his mouth to say something else rather witty, but the woman in the dress squealed and clapped her hands, speaking dreamily, "Kitten! My dear, sweet little kitty cat's here, he is, and he's got his bright, shiny claws, he does."

Xander blinked, looked over at Buffy and Willow, who looked as confused as he was, and en mass they all turned to the Billy Idol impersonator, "Uh, dude … who's 'Kitten'?"

The man grinned at him, "Well, mate, I think she's talking about you, unless you're not a bloke. Can't say I think you are, given you hang around with these birds, though," he went on with a nasty grin.

Xander didn't even think about it – he pulled the pistol in his left hand and emptied the 12-round clip into the vamp, hitting him ten times in the chest and twice in the face, but sadly it didn't do much more than throw him back into a near-by tree, where he slumped to the ground. Still not thinking straight, Xander swung his right hand up, the trench coat he was wearing parting to show the beefy assault shotgun, and squeezed the trigger as he turned level with the woman, who had vamped out by now. His first shot roared out as she moved, ripping a long gash in her dress, flashing him a great deal of her thigh as he shifted up and to the right, but by then she was already close to a charging Buffy, so he held off firing.

Buffy fended off the hissing vampiress while she heard Xander drag Willow off to one side – she had been shocked when he had shot the vampire Billy Idol like that, as she didn't even know he'd had the gun, but the shock had faded when he'd brought out the shotgun he'd showed them the day before and hit the woman in the dress; she was going to have a serious talk with him, later, about not telling her about his toys, let alone not letting her play with them.

Xander finished pulling Willow out of the fight area as Buffy started to match the vampiress woman move for move, but soon the vampiress saw she was outgunned and hissed out, "Slayer, I will be back and I'll avenge my Spikey, I will!" With that, the woman was gone as she dove through a hedge, leaving a good portion of her dress skirt behind. Though she had been a vampiress, Xander could at least admit she had a nice set of legs as Buffy growled and stalked over, her eyes directly on his shotgun.

"Xander?" Buffy's voice was saccharine sweet as she wiped her brow and tucked her stake into her back pocket, "Why didn't you tell me you had your shotgun on you tonight?"

"Because I liked it right where it was, in reserve?" He removed his pistol and changed clips, finding time to think that while the accuracy was okay, the power behind the pistol rounds left much to be desired, but such was the dilemma of the 9mm – good armor penetration, so-so stopping power.

Buffy pouted, "But I wanna shoot it! It can hurt a vamp really good, you know."

He nodded, "Yeah, I know, Buff, but it'll put you on your ass – I'm almost ten inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than you, and I can barely control it." Putting his pistol away, Xander looked down at the quivering, yet healing, mass of vampire that lay next to the tree, "Now, what was it you said? I can't really be a guy because I hang around with girls?" He gripped the pistol grip of the shotgun and grinned, pointing it at the vampire's messy chest, "Well, I'll tell you this – I'm secure enough to admit that Buffy's tougher than me, but I'm a better shot than she is."

His stake wasn't really much more than a surveying stake he'd taken the sharp edges off of with a utility knife near the grip, but it worked as he slammed the stake home into the blonde man's unmoving chest and he evaporated into dust; this action brought back a momentary flash of Jessie's final moments on the planet, but those soon faded as he stood back up, a lone tear falling from one eye.

"You alright, Xand?" He looked over at Willow, who looked at him worriedly.

"Yeah, Wills, I'm fine – vamp dust in the eyes, that's all."

(Later – Elsewhere)

Dru snarled as she stalked back and forth, all hints of her insanity gone – it had taken decades, but she had been able to claw her way back to some semblance of sanity, even under the watchful eyes of her childe, Spike, and she had hidden it well. Now, though, that her childe and her sire were dust, not to mention her Grandsire and Great-Grandsire, she had nobody to hide it from anymore.

Her Kitten, the soldier that had taken her sire, and now her childe, she had to find out just who he was, where he lived and what he did, but all of that paled in comparison to another thing she needed to do, and that was find a new dress. The boy had ripped hers with his weapon, and if she had her way, she'd rip his clothes up with a knife … and then off her hands … before she finally got around to turning him to replace her childe – she had seen a dark streak in the boy, and would use it to her advantage as soon as she was able to walk around and not flash the world.

(One week later – Harris Household)

From the doorway, he could see the boy in the garage wearing just a pair of shorts, hanging from the hole in the ceiling they used to get into the attic, his legs crossed under him as he pulled himself up again and again in a low, easy rhythm that showed a strength belying his physical stature. What pissed Tony off the most, though, was that the boy was making it look easy – even in his prime as a Marine, Tony had never been able to pull out more than a dozen without having to stop and adjust his grip, but he'd seen Alex pull out at lest twenty already and the kid was just starting to look tired, "Well, well, well, boy, it looks like you aren't as weak as you look. With any luck, we may make a man out of you yet, just like me."

Alex paused half-way up, looked over at him, and then dropped to the ground, barely making a sound though he wore his sneakers, his face only slightly red and sweat just starting to show on his body, "Is that so? A man … just like you? Gosh, to achieve that … I'd have to cut my own balls off, first." Alex's voice was filled with pure contempt as Tony felt his face go flushed red with anger, but he wasn't finished, "Don't tell me about being a man, Tony – you wouldn't know what that was if it came up and bit you in the ass, repeatedly."

"Don't you dare sass me, boy – I'm not too old to beat you some more like I used to," Tony threatened, expecting the boy to back down as he always had, but he was shocked to his core when Alex merely cricked his head left, and then right, and then smirked. "What, you think you can take me, boy? You remember what I told you about the first hit, don't ya?"

"Yeah, I need to make it count," Xander said as his step-father/uncle, as he had been his uncle until his father left, and then he'd married mom, smirked at him. "Thing is, Tony, it's not a question of if I can take you – the question is if I'll leave you ALIVE after I'm done with you."

Tony opened his mouth once, and then twice, but could see in the boy's eyes that Alex wasn't just making a threat – he could see in his eyes the death threat there, "You don't have the guts, boy – never have, never will."

"Step up or shut up, Tony – I'm tired of listening to you flap your gums; hell, I am just tired of you Period." Xander stepped forwards, loosening his arms slightly, "You're nothing more than a leech with the way you swooped in after mom and dad broke up, and yet you still think you're a man. Let me assure you, Anthony, you're nothing – not to me, not to mom, not even to our family."

Tony was seeing red when he lashed out at the boy, but his forward progress was soon used against him as the boy dodged out of the way and knocked his punch off to the side, sending him hurtling into the tool box he'd managed to filch away from his brother years before. Even as his eyesight was filled with sparkles of light, he rebounded from the hit and felt something slam directly into his back, right into his kidneys with enough force to drive the air out of his lungs and send him to his knees.

Dimly, Tony heard Alex speak, "You see, Tony, I don't need to fear you anymore, and neither does mom, and the reason that is, is because you are going to be leaving her alone … forever." Tony heard the boy grab something from the inside of the now-open tool box and then walk over towards him, before his head was yanked back, making him bend his back to keep his hair from being ripped out. He saw Alex's face at this point, and it was icy cold as he held up the big buck knife he kept in the garage for special occasions, "You see, Tony, I'd have no problems slitting your throat right now, I really wouldn't, but I'm not going to – I'm giving you a chance, which is more than you ever gave me or mom, and that's to get the hell out of Sunnydale, forever."

"Jessie and I … we're married, boy," he managed to spit out, but Alex's face never changed.

"Common law marriage, as there is no marriage license to be found – trust me, I checked. The house and car is in my mother's name, and the only thing with your name on it is the phone and light bills, things that are easily taken care of." Alex's grip on his hair tightened even more and Tony let out a pained squeal as he was arched back even more, "Now, Tony, I'm giving you twenty four hours as a head start – if you're still in Sunnydale after that, I'm going to arrange a meeting between you and some … gang members on PCP. You've heard of them, I'm sure," the boy went on casually as Tony felt his heart stop cold, "especially since you work for the city morgue, and you know that if I let them have you, you're just going to disappear like so many others."

Once he was done speaking to Tony, Xander let him go, the older man hitting the concrete floor with a meaty smack and a groan even as Xander folded the knife – before Halloween, he'd only dreamed of doing that, but now with Fly's training, not to mention his sheer balls, Xander felt he could get away with it as he folded the knife shut and put it back into the tool box. Tony had been nothing more than annoyance since that night, and now said annoyance was going to go away, "Oh, and Tony, don't think I make idle threats – you taught me that, remember? 'Always honor a threat' and then you broke my dad's guitar over my back."

"So, that is how the guitar was broken." He turned and saw his mother, still dressed in her nursing scrubs, standing in the doorway of the garage, her dark eyes, eyes he'd seen every time he looked in the mirror, narrowed in anger as she looked at the 'man' on the floor. She then looked up at him, her narrowed eyes slightly widening, "Alejandro, were you serious? Twenty four hours?"

He nodded, speaking back to her in her native Italian tongue, "(Yes, mother.)"

She responded in kind, "(Why so long? We've been waiting for this chance, and now you give him an entire day?)"

Xander just shrugged, "(It seemed only right – this way, he cannot complain about not having enough time.)"

"Damned Wops," Tony growled out as the two jabbered back and forth to each other. "Don't even speak American like the re-OOF!" The air rushed out of his lungs as the boy kicked him in the ribs hard enough to move him a few feet, though it felt as if he'd just caved in his chest.

Xander looked down at the cowed man, who was gasping for breath, "I'm sorry, Tony, but did you say something? I could have sworn I gave you 24 hours, and now you're down to 23 hours, 58 minutes and 15 seconds." He grinned as the man glared at him but got to his feet.

"This isn't over, boy – I'll have what is mine one day."

AN: Okay, that's it for this part – OOC on Xander's part in the last, yeah, I get that, but I can see it happening after a while. So, please, R&R, if you would – or I'll sick my own personal Dru on you, and while she has a pulse, she's just as batty.


	4. Chapter 4

4?

AN: Okay, I've come to the decision that some of this chapter may be a little darker and more adult than the ones before – not so much Satanic rituals and stuff, but dealing with the no-so-nice parts of society. Won't be a theme, though, just part of it. Oh, yeah, and be warned – TONS of angst in the last part – builds to the next chapter and some of what happens there.

(Several Months Later – LA)

"Hey, baby, looking for a good time? Twenty gets you the best head in LA county," the woman in a short dark blue spandex dress, CFM boots and with a heavily made up face and hair propositioned him for not the first time as he walked by.

He smiled over at her, "Sorry, Linda, not today, I'm on business." He'd met Linda, who's street name was Chastity, a month before on his first trip to LA, when she had been run down by four vamps and had helped her out of a bad situation by using one of his new toys, something Fly's training, his warped mind and years and years of bad cartoons had cooked up, a directional-based high-powered UV flash strobe that had burned out the eyes of the vamps long enough to let him stake them. Linda, after some explanations on why the guys had turned to dust after he had stripped them of all their cash and jewelry (about three grand worth), had offered him a 'thank you' in the form of a freebie, but he had declined because he was late for his appointment back then. Every time since then, she'd made the same offer and he had rebuffed her every time, though he had given her five hundred dollars, once, when her pimp had come around demanding his cut when she was short – pimp had tried to jump him, then, but a pair of handy LAPD officers had kept Xander from showing the short, mousy man with a .38 snub nose in his pocket the error of his ways.

"Always business here, baby," Linda said back to him with a grin and a wink, walking back to her normal spot on the street, calling out to a car that pulled up before getting in. Xander worried about her, and had even asked why she didn't stop because one day she'd pay the price, but she had shrugged and said that she had to pay the bills somehow, and her waitress job wasn't cutting it.

Xander shook his head and continued on towards his destination, a low-key weapons shop that had been suggested to him by Willy the Snitch and about a dozen or so other, and far more reputable, people as the place to go if you needed work done. He'd used his shotgun on several patrols, constantly telling Buffy that, no, she could not use it, when a sudden though struck him – he had no ways to repair it, let alone the knowledge to do so; if it broke, either due to wear and tear or from action in combat, he was up shit creek without even a pair of water wings, let alone a boat. Once he'd gotten a few names and references, he'd contacted this one person, Candice Jacobs and the woman had asked only a few questions about where he'd gotten the weapon – apparently Candy wasn't exactly unaware of what happened in the real world after dark and, after a few allusions on his part she had gotten the idea of where he might have gotten the weapon.

The store wasn't exactly advertised, but then again it didn't need to be as it wasn't exactly on the normal sight-seeing tour – located in an old brownstone with four levels and a basement, he knew that on two of those levels there were shops and machines that could rival any UAC machine shop, and Candice knew how to use them all from her time in the Navy. Walking up to the door, he pressed the call button and waited, and not for very long.

"(You're late, Harris.)"

He looked up at the camera, smiling a waving, showing his off-hand and the white plastic sack he had there, too, "Candy, I've know you for less than two months, but I know that when you're on a job, you forget things like eating and sleeping, so I picked up something."

There was silence for several seconds and then the door buzzed, letting him in.

Candice Jacobs wasn't exactly hard to miss at nearly six feet tall, one hundred and seventy pounds of chiseled muscle and with amber eyes, but he had always thought her most distinctive features were her white-blonde hair, which was natural from what he could tell, and the tattoo of a dragon, one that was visible under her ever-present tight white t-shirt and no bra, that started above one wrist, went up to her shoulder, wrapped around her torso several times and ended on her other wrist. She extruded an aura of 'don't fuck with me if you wanna live', but she was also a shrewd business woman given how she had arranged their meetings on her terms, "What's in the bag?"

He grinned and raised the bag, "Jellies and custards, dozen total." Her disposition brightened instantly as he handed them over, "So, Candy, what brings me out here today?"

She took the box of doughnuts and motioned him back to her office, which was actually nothing more than an old work bench that had several drawers welded to it, and she took a seat behind it, propping her boots up on the edge and munching happily away on a strawberry-filled pastry, "Well, Harris, I've got a proposition for you."

He quirked at her a quick grin, "Oh, Candy, I'm flattered – kinks or vanilla?" Since Fly's timely intervention on Halloween, Xander had grown up a lot and, while not exactly Casanova or anybody, he wasn't a simpering virgin who blushed at the slightest innuendo like Willow (though he was known to go a rather 'adorable', according to Jenny, Willow and Buffy, shade of red when Jenny caught him off-guard with a barb of her own).

She shot him a sly look, "Vanilla and for a long, long time, but that's not what I meant – I know you said you wanted this kept on the DL, no registering the gun parts or anything, but I have a business proposition for you." He motioned for her to go on and she did, "I have a few old friends still in the Navy and they have contacts over at the DOD – several companies are vying for a new ship-defense weapon, and I want to know if you'll let me pitch you shotgun to them."

He arched an eyebrow to him, "Kinda short-ranged, isn't it? Shotguns are only good to about twenty meters before it gets dicey on penetration."

She nodded, "Yeah, but not many ships are going to be boarded so this is merely a formality – if they like it, they may adapt it for other uses and, as we would have the patent on it, we'd get a cut of the sale … a large cut." She finished her doughnut and put the box down, "Well?"

He thought about it – sure, he'd be splitting it with her, but he needed the cash if he wanted to actually get into a college one day and be able to pay for it, "I'd want mine back, Candy – what would I have to do to get it?"

She smiled at him, putting her feet down and standing up, "Well, normally from someone as young as you, I'd ask for hours upon hours of sexual pleasure," she purred, walking over and sitting astride his lap, looking down at him slightly with a grin on her face. "But for you, kid, I'll settle for a 60-40 cut, with me as the 60."

He remembered when Arlene would pull the same stunt with Fly, when they had gotten back to Earth, so he pulled the same stunt Fly would pull on Arlene – he laced his armed around her body and grabbed her ass with both hands, pulling her closer to him, which got a shocked look out of her as he unabashedly looked her torso up and down, "I don't know, Candy – I may want to do the hours upon hours of sexual service to you. It'll be more fun that way."

She quickly recovered, giving him a smarmy grin, "Kid, you're cute, but I'm too much woman for you. Besides, what makes you think I'm going to give it up to you?"

He didn't budge, "Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I'm willing to try."

She looked down at him for several seconds before she tilted her head back and let out several barks of laughter, pulling him into a hug that had his face in her breastbone, "Christ, kid, you had me going there for a second!" She let him go and got up, stretching as she did, "So, care to give me your decision?"

"Fifty-fifty, Candy, non-negotiable," he told her, getting up and shifting himself slightly to hide his obvious arousal. She may have been butch, but she was still gorgeous.

She smiled at him, "Deal – so what're ya here for today, squirt?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her, "Candy, I'm almost tall as you and outweigh you by ten pounds – don't call me squirt." She grinned at him some more, but he went on, "I'm here to ask about my fab jobs for the AS."

She nodded, "Had to reverse engineer a few things, but I'm almost done – took the entire thing apart, drew up plans and specs for it, and that took a while, but I have just about everything I need. Anything important you wanna talk about?"

"Keep the mags at ten rounds or five rounds – the twenties are too easy to blow through and on full-auto, that many come damned close to breaking my wrists."

She nodded again, seeing where he was going, "Okay, stick mags and a burst restrictor on it – anything else?"

He thought about it, "Somehow, I doubt they would want a carbine, so no, not off the top of my head. Well, that is, other than 'can I get my gun back'?"

She smirked at him, "Sure … if you have the money." He reached under his duster and into his back pocket, grabbing the envelope of cash he'd scraped together after going on a few minor nest raids – Fly wasn't all that good at thinking up neat little toys to disable people and vampires, but he pretty good when it came down to raiding places he wasn't supposed to be in. He hadn't been rolling in the money, but each vamp seemed to have a few hundred dollars in cash here and there, and lots of jewelry from his vics that could be pawned – it had been a bit of a gut-wrencher, but Xander figured that he needed the money more than the dead did.

They walked to the back of her shop, where she opened up one of several gun vaults and removed a large black rifle-case which had several scraps of paper plastered on it, turning and handing it to him, "These warnings will allow you to carry this in plain sight without copping too much flak from the police, and explain that what is inside is a prototype – I've gotten this done by the best, but I don't want it tested too quickly, got it?"

"Got it – don't get caught." He handed her the money and she handed him the case, "You're not going to count it?"

She smiled at him a little, "Nah, I trust you – plus, if you do screw me over-"

He grinned at her, "Nice mental picture, Candy."

She ignored him and went on,"-I'll just take it out of your cut." She walked him back to the front, "I'll have the papers drawn up and sent to your address in a week, Xander – I'd like them back soon."

He nodded, turning and sticking out his hand, "I'd say it was a pleasure doing business with you, Candy, but I know the rules – we've never met, you don't know me, and I don't know you."

She nodded, "Yeah, it's a shame, but those are the rules." She shook his hand, squeezing it slightly, "If you ever do decide to, though, give me a call and we'll see about getting you some ink."

He snorted, "If I show up with a tattoo, my mother is going to kill me." He shivered, "Trust me, nothing worse than having a mad Italian woman on your ass."

(Sunnydale – January 20th)

Another month had come and gone, and Xander was in hot water with Buffy yet again – she had been taking every chance she could, nit picking at him at ever turn she could, and when he'd asked her about it, he had gotten the ever-elusive 'oh, you know what you did'; that particular response had been a favorite of Arlene's and had often pissed Fly off to no end, and it did the same to him. Recently, he'd taken to ignoring her, hoping to stay out of trouble, but that too was just enough to get her to snap at him, so he'd torn into her one day about making a pest of herself, which had made her tear up and then run away crying – neither Willow nor Giles had or would tell him what he had done wrong, but he could have cared less with the month he was having.

Tony had gotten some lawyers from a Sunnydale law firm, to run down this, that and the other on him and his mother and was making himself a pest to the point that, twice, his mother had forced him to put down the gun he had gotten into hand and to NOT go after Tony; Tony was suing them for the house, the car, all of it and finally, one morning, Jessica had enough of it. As he was off to school, she picked up the telephone and dialed a number she hoped she would never need to dial, and the other end was picked up, "Yes, I need to speak to Adam Harris – tell him this is Jessica."

At school, Xander was having a passingly bad day – he'd gotten into a near-brawl with Larry and his goons over how much attention Buffy and Cordelia were showing him, attention that Xander hadn't noticed at all (though, honestly, he hadn't been looking), he had been late to his first class and the guy they had gotten to replace Snyder was trying to out-Snyder him with the amount of rude comments and giving out of detentions. For a moment, Xander was sure that this was the Universe's way of getting even with him for accidentally shooting Quark.

Finally, at lunch, things came to a head when Willow dragged him off to the side and gave him the Resolve Face, "Xander, what's up with you?"

"Aside from having a really bad day, not much – you?"

She glared at him, "Xander, I know you're not the most observant guy on the planet, but haven't you noticed that you've had both Buffy and Cordelia throwing themselves at you for the past few months?" He blinked at her and she sighed, "No, of course you haven't!"

His mind thought back to the past few months and it slowly began to dawn on him the inordinate amount of attention that both Buffy and Cordelia had been paying to him – the offers of hanging out at the Bronze and after Patrol by Buffy, the looks and compliments from Cordelia and her sheep, all of it began to click into place and Xander groaned, sinking his head to the table with a thunk, "God, please tell me that's not why they are angry at me, Wills."

He assumed she nodded, "'Fraid so, Xand."

He looked up at her, "Am I blind or something?"

He wasn't sure what emotion it was that played out on her face, but she nodded, sorta, "Well, maybe not completely blind, but … partially blind?"

He sighed disgustedly, "Wills, what is it that I have to do to make them both understand that I'm not looking right now? That because of Fly and Arlene's marriage for twenty years I can't even look at another woman and feel all lusty without thinking of her?"

She looked at him for a moment and he could see the sadness blooming in her eyes, "Oh, Xander …"

He shook his head, "I mean, yeah, she was my … damn, HIS best friend and everything, but … still, it doesn't change anything." He groaned and slammed his head into the table, several times, before stopping, "Ouch."

When he looked up she was shaking her head, "That's what you get, Xander, for doing that – sometimes I think I should just force you to marry me so that I can tell you when you're doing stupid things and to keep you from hurting yourself."

He snorted, "We'd kill each other in a week, Wills, and you know it."

She nodded sadly, "True, but to quote you, 'what a way to go'." He looked at her oddly and she blushed, "Not the right point to say that?"

"Not unless I had said we'd kill each other in bed, Wills – nice try, though." He got up from the table and they both walked to the Library, where they sat down and groaned in unison when Giles walked over, a fuming Buffy not far behind, "What now?"

Giles gave him a look and then sighed, "Xander, Buffy has been telling me that you –"

Willow held up a hand, "He explained it to me, Giles – more Fly mental residue stuff." He looked over at Willow, stunned, and she shrugged, "Well, Buffy was getting all mopey and stuff and we thought it was best to, you know, talk about it."

He groaned, leaning his bead back as the door opened, "Great, my lack of attention to a girl is the subject of group discussion – my life is now complete."

"It could be worse, Alexander," he jumped as his mother's voice came out of nowhere, spinning around in his chair until he was looking at her … and the man behind her.

"Always. Mom … what is HE doing here?" Xander felt an old anger start to build within him, an anger that he had long-thought hashed out, but apparently it was still there.

Jessica winced at her son's tone, "He's here to help us with your step … with Tony." She looked back at her ex husband for a second, who was looking Xander over with a keen eye, and then back at her son, speaking in her native tongue, "(Son … we need his help.)"

"(Then where in the hell has he been, mom?)" Xander's tone was harsh, filled with emotion, but not unfounded as memories of beatings that could have been prevented came to mind, "(He wasn't man enough to deal with my being here back then, so why bring him here now?)"

"That … was uncalled for, son," Adam Harris spoke, fully able to understand his son and wife's speech while the others in the room looked quite lost. He'd not dressed in his uniform for the specific reason to not remind his son just what his job was, and who his loyalties were to.

Alexander just snorted, a motion full of disgust and distain, "(Really? Then maybe you can tell me what the hell you're doing here and then leave – I haven't needed you in a long time, Adam, and this thing with Anthony hasn't changed that.)"

"Xander … who is this?"

He looked over at Willow, his anger being shoved to the back burner instantly, not wanting to snap at her, so he sighed, "This, Willow, is my biological father … Major Adam Harris, United States Army Rangers."

"Lieutenant Colonel, actually," Adam chipped in, somewhat surprised that his son knew his rank. He went on quickly, "Look, Alex, I know I haven't been here, I know you're still angry over the past, and rightfully so, but … son, just let it go. I can't change what I did then, no more than you can change what happened with my brother for all these years, so let us just … work past it."

Xander drew himself up to launch into a tirade but then stopped and looked back at the others in the group, so he deflated, slightly, "Not here – I've got a whole bunch of things I wanna tell you in various tones and volumes of voice, Adam, but not here." With that, he stormed out of the Library – he had to go hit something, hard and repeatedly, and he didn't want to run the risk of it being his father.

AN: Okay, that it for this chapter - lots of changes will be made, lots of yelling in the next part (some of it deserved, some of it not). May be a while, though, so R&R, maybe that'll get me moving some more.


	5. Chapter 5

5?

(Sunnydale High Gym)

He was impressed with the quickness and the strength that his son was putting into the hits on the heavy bag and also with the stamina – most people Alex's age, when they started out fast and strong, ended rather quickly, but Alex had been going at the bag for nearly ten minutes and didn't show signs of stopping.

Beside him, Jessica smiled slightly, "He's come so far so quickly, Adam – before Halloween last year, I doubt he could have lasted five minutes on that old bag you had in the garage, but the other day I watched him attack it for nearly an hour and he still looked like he could go even longer when he was done."

Adam nodded as his son jinked out of the way of the bag, spinning and planting his elbow into where a man's shoulder blades would be, "Where did he learn to fight? Those moves … they're similar to what they taught us in Ranger school."

He felt her shrug as Alex planted a knee into his 'opponent's' breadbasket, "I'm not sure, and he won't tell me – he's a good boy, Adam, and I know he's not involved with the gangs around here, but I think …" He looked at her and she went on, almost sadly, "I think they've attacked him in the past, and he's learned to defend himself."

Adam looked back at Alex and made a mental note to check for any and all former Army Rangers, or military in general, in the area who might have taught his son, if for no other reason than to see just how much Alex had learned. "He's good – not quite like he's gone to Ranger school, but he's not far off as far as his conditioning. When did this happen?"

"Again, after Halloween – I'm not sure what happened that night, but whatever it did, it … it changed him, Adam." He could hear the hitch in her voice, "After that, he started working out like a man possessed, he started locking things in his room … he started standing up to Tony, hell, he even started to take the bottle away from me." He knew she had been something of a social drinker in the past, but it had deteriorated greatly due to his little brother – he and Tony were going to have to have a 'chat' later on, at some point or another. "It came to a head not long ago, when Tony found Alex in the garage, working out – I caught only part of it, but Alex … he was ready to kill Tony."

Adam looked at her and then at his son, who delivered a hard, fast and deadly shot to where a man's throat would have been, and began to wonder just what is son was really capable of.

For his part, Xander was starting to get bored – he'd worked out most of his general aggression on the bag in the first few minutes, a bunch of old stuff for the next five and n now was just going through an old routine from Light Drop as his parents watched him. He wasn't angry with Adam like he was with Tony – that level of hate was reserved for just Tony and all demonic vampires in general; what he was pissed off about was the chicken shit way his father had cut and run on them when he was just a toddler; he understood that as a Ranger Adam had a lot of stuff he had to do, but he could have at least sent a fucking CARD on occasion, let alone visit.

With one final hit, he walked away from the bag and began to towel off – he had a lot of things to do that day, and beating on a heavy bag, as fun as it was when he envisioned Tony's face there, wasn't one of them.

(Later – Harris Household)

Adam had to give it to his son – a room of a teenaged male was supposed to look like a bomb, or ten, had been dropped on it, but the room he was looking at was squared away to a level that any Platoon Sergeant would have been proud of; he looked over the things on the walls, mostly pictures and such, but he then noticed that there was a small shelf of books with titles he couldn't pronounce or understand – Tobin's Spirit Guide, Delomius Demonology, Werecritters N' Things? What kind of stuff was Alex into? He continued leafing through the titles, finally coming across titles he was familiar with – Edmund's Ballistics and Theory of Arc Trajectory, Firepower Through the Ages – tenth edition, Metallurgy: Methods To The Madness, and The Art of War, by Sun Tzu. Not exactly what one expected to see on a teen's bookshelf, but to each his own.

He looked again around the room and saw several odds and ends he could not think his way around, 'Why in the hell would my son have a stake next to his bed?' and ones he did not want to think his way around, 'Why does this smell like blood … but is bright pink?', and one he wasn't sure what to think of, 'Tattoos: Meanings Behind the Art – Jessica is going to kill my son.' It was then, though, that he noticed that, under the bed, there was a rifle case – he carefully pulled it out even as his mind screamed at him to turn around, but he ignored it and jimmied the locking mechanisms on the case and opening it only partially.

"Less than a day here and you're already snooping through my stuff – that must some kind of a fucking record." He dropped the case and saw Alex in the doorway, leaning against the jam with his arms crossed, eyes flat and lips drawn into a thin line – it was an expression Adam knew well, with as many times as Jessica had used it against him in the early parts of their marriage and their entire courtship.

Adam looked first at Alex and then at the gun case, "Am I going to find anything illegal in here, son?"

Alex walked forwards and opened the case for him, pulling out a sheaf of papers and handing it to him, "Covered."

Adam ignored the papers and looked in shock at the weapon there – it was large, beefy, mean-looking, black matte coloring and its specs had come across his desk about two weeks before, "Alex … what in the hell are you doing with this weapon? It's being considered –"

"Yeah, DOD contract for intra-ship defense, among other things; if you check those papers, you'll see I supplied the prototype and my partner made the official schematics." The weapon was in a class of its own, hailed by several branches of the military, and several militaries, as a godsend, but that didn't explain anything as to how his son had managed to get his hands on it. "I've signed papers saying that this came into my possession through legal means and, as of 0700 yesterday, according to Candy, we have a patent on it." Alex gave him a cold grin, "If the US military wants it, it's going to pay through the nose for it."

"Somehow I doubt that being your father will gain us favor if you decide to sell it, then."

Xander gave his father a chilled grin, "Wow, maybe I did get some brains from you – gods know I got my temper from mom." He went to his closet and shucked his blue t-shirt, opting for his traditional black night-time shirt and grabbing a field jacket for the night, as he didn't want to arouse suspicion from his father too much.

Adam narrowed his eyes at the solid-sounding thump from Alex's jacket as he put it on –he knew that sound very well, but he didn't say anything as Alex grabbed a bag from the inside of his closet, "If you're curious, the porn's on the top shelf, money's between the box springs and mattress, and the gun case key is … well, I'm not telling you that." With that, his son was out the door, jetting past his mother.

"I see you've met the ever-moving night creature that is our son," she said with a wry look on her face.

He didn't return it, "Jessie … I'm going after him – something isn't right." He made sure to close and re-lock the case as well as he could, not wanting to arouse his ex's suspicions about their son. Alex was up to something … and he wasn't sure he liked what his mind was proving to him as to what it could be.

(Crestfield Cemetery – Later)

Xander knew that, even after twenty minutes of mindless wandering, where as he had started out on a rendezvous with Buffy and Willow in the cemetery, that while his father was a Ranger, he wasn't the best there was at shadowing somebody – half a dozen times Xander had caught him cold, but he'd let it go; he was used to Vampires shadowing him, so a 40-ish year old human male with military training wasn't exactly in the same ballpark. What HAD caught his attention, though, was that he could hear someone else shadowing Adam on a nearly parallel course.

After another ten minutes, though, he came to a clearing and decided to end the chase, "Look, whoever you are, I know you're both pulse-less and have been following the old man for at least twenty minutes – why not get your undead ass out here and take on someone who has anger issues to work out."

He got a response, though one he honestly did not expect, "Oh, do let your anger build, Alexander – it will make you blood taste so yummy, it will." Dru melted out of the shadows, her normally insane grin now looking disturbingly normal, "Tell me, Alexander, what do you think of my new clothes? You destroyed my old dress, if you recall."

He looked and saw that she was now showing that she had a leather fetish of some kind – low-slung pants, high-reach boots, a corset fringed with red lace and elbow-length gloves all in leather, but also, and he hoped he was wrong about this, a leather thong? "Cow back in for the undead, Dru?"

She nodded happily at him, twirling around slightly, "Yes, it is, though I must say the snacks who were wearing these won't be needing them anymore." She smiled at him evilly and morphed her face into her game face, "Tell me, Alexander – do you want to live forever?"

Adam stopped cold as the woman in black leather morphed into something … not human and asked his son about living forever – his son's voice, though, caught him off-guard as it was rather amused, "Since when did you join the Marines, Dru? Only they asked that question, I think."

Dru hissed at the boy, who was mocking her slightly as he matched her as she began to circle him, "Do not mock me, boy – I am offering you eternity."

He nodded at her, his hand sliding behind his back, "I know you are, Dru, and I'm telling you no – I quite like the ability to get a tan."

Adam watched as the brunette in a leather thong hissed at his son, her fingers becoming claws, "I will have you, boy – you took my childe from me, and now you will replace him."

Alex shivered mockingly, speaking in the same tone of voice, though with a bad Southern accent, "Oh, Ahm so sca-ared." His face then lost the false humor, becoming deadly serious, "Dru, I want you to understand that this isn't personal for me – your kind are an abomination and your kind will DIE if they cross paths with me."

Dru hissed at him, "One of my kind will be lucky enough to kill you, boy, and when they turn you they will make a monster worthy of Angelus' title, no, BEYOND the title of Scourge of Europe! I can see your inner darkness, boy, and it fills me with lust – so few humans are as naturally volatile as you are."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Dru," Alex said with a tone of false sadness, "but the only way you are going to kill me is if I take you with me, thus you can't turn me." Adam's mind tried to catch up with this even as his son's hand whipped forwards, revealing a pistol in his hands, "Goodbye, Dru."

She sneered at him, morphing her face back to its human guise, "Your mundane bullets may have stopped my childe, but won't stop me."

She stopped sneering at Alexander's predatory grin, "Who said anything about mundane, Dru? You inspire creativity." With that, he pulled the trigger, repeatedly.

Adam watched as his son pulled the trigger until the slide locked back, the gun barking out and each round hitting the woman in her chest, some even blowing through her as her face was schooled into a look of shock. With one last utterance of, "Kitten," Adam watched her … dissolve… into dust as Alex calmly reloaded his weapon.

"You can stop hiding – dad, it's over," Alex called out, swapping out magazines before chambering a round.

Adam stumbled out from the brush he had been hiding behind, his mind whirling to catch up but it was suddenly stuck in neutral, "That …"

"-wasn't human, yeah, I know." His son nodded slightly and put his gun away, taking out a small bag and walking over to where his brass had flown to, making sure to pick up every once, "Look, can this wait until tomorrow? Maybe then you think it was nothing more than just a bad dream."

From the look on Adam's face, Xander knew that wasn't going to happen.

AN: Okay, big explanations next time – review, please.


	6. Chapter 6

6?

AN: In the intervening time, Xander has told Buffy about the ordeal and she, in turn, has told Giles – none are looking forwards to this. Also, heavy angst and bloodthirsty natures at the ending part – just some stuff, nothing too bad.

(Two Days Later)

Xander knew his luck wasn't that good, even before his father had caught him dusting Dru, but now he knew that the fates were against him – standing at the table, chatting with G-man, was his father, but not only that was the fact that his mother was off to the side, chatting it up with both Willow and Buffy; yes, God did hate him, "Hey, guys."

Giles looked at him and smiled, "Hello, Xander – your father and I have been speaking for a little while and … I must say, he told me quite an interesting story from a few days ago."

Xander looked over at Willow and Buffy, both of whom drew Jessica out of the room so that they could speak openly, "About Dru and her new leather fetish?"

Giles nodded, "And about her wanting to turn you, Xander – I've filled your father in on several things that are, in actuality, real, but I am going to leave it to you to tell him the rest. Cheers," Giles finished, grabbing his books and walking off, leaving the pair alone.

Xander looked at the door silently for a moment before he snarled, "He will pay for this – I swear it."

Adam, for his part, didn't look fazed at all at the somewhat cheap way he had been left with his son, "Answers, please?"

Xander sighed and took a seat, motioning for Adam to follow, "So, what do you think you know?"

Adam took a deep breath and relayed to his son what he 'thought he knew', that vampires did exist, so did other demons, and a few other oddities, and about the Hellmouth, but then brought up a rather touch subject, "And that you hate me."

Alex, for his part, didn't even bat an eye, "Is that all you picked up from what Giles told you?"

"No, that's what I picked up from what I've seen you do so far, son – you seem to hate me with a passion."

Xander rolled his eyes, "No, that's Tony – you annoy me, greatly, and even aggravate me with your presence."

"Why?"

"Because you couldn't man-up and accept that you had a wife and son, so you pulled some chicken shit disappearing act and left the door wide-open for your dip-ship brother." Alex's voice was cool and dripping with venom at the mere mention of his brother, but not without some truth to it.

Adam took a breath a let it out slowly, "I was reassigned, Alex, and your mother … she didn't want to follow me from base to base, uprooting you all of the time. She said that you'd be better for it."

Alex just snorted at him, "I've got the memories of a guy who doesn't technically exist, enough nightmares and terror-inspiring shit in my skull to keep Stephen King in business for the next few DECADES, I'm apathetic towards the human condition and I want nothing more than to find your brother and beat him into a bloody mess – THAT, Adam, isn't 'better for it'."

Adam felt his temper starting to rise, "Don't you think she and I know that, Alex? Sure, she puts on a good act, but Jessica is not as dim as my little brother seems to think she is – she had a good idea what you were doing all those night last school year and was told by Mister Giles what the world is really like. Don't you think that she and I feel really shitty about all of this? That I'm second-guessing every decision I made all those years ago, and she's not doing the same?"

Alex didn't even give him the grace of even looking like he was going to care, "Good – I hope you do know this, then. Now, what are we going to do? I somehow highly doubt that the American government, let alone the military AND government, is as blind as the rest of the country – do they know about demons?"

"There are rumors of groups that know about them, yes," Adam conceded, "and I got a call from my CO this morning stating that I'm being given a lateral transfer to another unit that deals in … shadier things, like HST's." Alex arched an eyebrow at him and Adam looked down at the paper the fax machine had spit out at him, "Hostile Sub-Terrestrials."

Xander snorted, "Please, loose the stupid acronyms – it's embarrassing and degrading to the demons and my intelligence. Okay, so they know about demons – how much do they think they know and what are they doing about it?"

Adam shrugged, "I don't know yet, son – in a few days, though, I will have that information and if it's as little as I pray it isn't, I may be authorized to deal with Mister Giles directly on acquiring information about the HS … demons, son." He looked down at the paper in front of him and the order there as well, "I have also been ordered … to bring you to Fort Benning over the summer, to speak to several people about your ASWS (Assault Shotgun Weapons System), and maybe about demons as well. Your mother," he spoke quickly in order to stave off any interruptions from Alex, "has reinforced that order, something about father and son bonding."

Xander rolled his eyes at his father, "You mean she saw the paper and you caved."

Adam looked at his son, "Do YOU want to tell her no?" His son gave him a look that plainly said 'do I LOOK suicidal' and he nodded, "Then the issue is tabled … for now."

They said nothing to each other for several minutes before Adam spoke again, "So, just how much do you hate my little brother?"

"Why, do you want me to count the ways?"

Adam gave him a grin tinged with a touch of evil, "Well, I figured that you and I could pay him a quick visit and … chat."

Alex looked at him for a second and then a savage grin split his face as he stood and removed a pistol, two knives and a coil of wire, "Let's go then – it's always a good time to go beat on Tony."

(Outside Library)

Even as she watched her son and ex-husband walk away, Jessica noticed just how similar they were in both their gait and air of destructive potential as the way was cleared for them on the way to the office – no good would come from the pair of them actually agree on something.

"So, Ms. Harris," Willow caught her attention again, reminding her to have a chat with her son about not seeing the young redhead as a woman, instead of just a friend, "you seem to be taking all of this … kinda well."

She shrugged slightly even as Buffy turned back to the pair, "I guess on some level I always knew, once Alex started staying out to all hours of the night, and on top of that Tony's … rantings." Buffy winced at the memories of learning just how much of her friend's life she didn't know about, given that he knew so much about her own life, but Xander's mom went on, "I can't say that I'm not worried about Alex, given that he's not like Buffy, or even learning magic like you, Willow, but … I know he'll be okay."

"So, you're not going to try and talk him out of it?" Willow looked over at Buffy after the question was asked, remembering the argument that had been hashed out many times between her best female friend and her oldest friend on the planet about his lack of powers and his continued helping – Xander had told them both, in no uncertain terms, that neither of them could or would dictate his actions or his life and if they tried … it would get ugly.

Jessica snorted, "No, not that it would do me any good, Buffy – believe me, I know he has my temper, and if I pushed the issue we'd just start arguing back in forth in a few languages until it came to a stalemate."

Another wince from Buffy, another thing that they didn't know from Xander's life – he was fluent in English (surprisingly, in Giles' eyes), Italian, and had mastered more than a little German, too. How much more of her Xander-shaped friend was there that she didn't know?

Willow looked at where Xander and Adam had gone, "Um, where do you think they are going?"

"To the office?" Willow looked at Ms. Harris and, for not the first time, marveled at where Xander had gotten his sense of humor as the older woman suppressed a giggle, "I do believe Adam is going to sign Alex out and they are going to go out to do something."

"What?"

Jessica shrugged, "I don't know – I highly doubt Adam would take Alex to a strip club or a house of ill repute, but knowing the pair of them, I would think a 'meeting' with Tony wouldn't be out of the question."

Buffy gave Willow a slightly sick look before turning back to Ms. Harris, "'Meeting'? That sounds vaguely ominous."

Jessica smiled at Buffy, a smile that made the young girl shiver, "I doubt that the meeting will be particularly … civil, Buffy – in fact, if I know my ex and my son, I would be surprised if Tony stays upright and conscious for the entire process."

(Later - Apartment of Anthony Harris)

Adam watched as his son took the squeeze bottle of ammonia and hit the spots on the floor with it even as his little brother lay on the couch, beaten bloody and unconscious, and marveled at the lack of destruction that was present – if it had been him, he would have beaten Tony against the walls, the furniture, whatever was handy, but Alex had done it all with his hands, allowing him a few hits in as well, and all in quick time, too before he started to sanitize the room, "You've done this before?"

Alex shook his head, capping the bottle, "No, but I saw it done on television a few times, though." He put the bottle away and, when he returned, had a knife in his hand, "If you'll excuse me, I'll finish the job."

Adam grabbed him by the hand, "What do you think you're doing?"

Xander looked at his father with a 'duh' look, "Finishing the job?"

Adam gave him a frosty look, "Since when are you a murderer? He's unconscious and helpless – that's murder."

"Payback is more like it – do you know how many times he did the same to me, only I wasn't lucky enough to die, Adam?" Xander felt some old anger come to the surface as he unconsciously flipped the knife, "Ten times, Adam – that son of a bitch beat me unconscious ten times, mom at LEAST that many, and you're telling me that slitting his throat would be MURDER? From where I sit, that's justice."

"The … the police…"

"Are incompetent, at best," he growled, catching the knife and slamming it down to where it stuck in the floor with a solid sound. "If you want to EVER get into my good graces, get someone to really look at the Sunnydale PD, the city government, hell, from the Mayor down to the lowest of the low in the secretary pool – somehow, I doubt the Feds will like what they find."

Adam blinked at his son, not sure what to make of the anger or the heat there, "And just what do you think this will accomplish, son? And don't forget, I'm only a colonel in the Rangers, not at the FBI, so I might not be able to help you here."

Alex snarled and began to stalk about in a very predatory manner, "Too many people die around here with too few REAL answers – I mean, come the fuck on, how many people do you think can die of 'accidental animal attacks' before someone comes out here to take a look around?" Alex then turned and glared at Tony, "And THAT lump of shit works as the morgue – he's at least complicit in it, helping covering up all of this shit."

Adam held his hands up, "Alex, take a few deep breaths and THINK about what you're doing for a second, son – I get that you're angry, trust me, I want to take my brother out to Benning and toss him out of one of the Jumpmasters we use to train the troops, but if you kill him now, he can't give you any answers later." He watched Alex bend down and pick up the knife and felt his guts clench, "What are you going to do with that now?"

"To put it up after washing my prints off it – let's go, getting mad isn't going to do anybody any good now," Xander huffed out as he felt his anger drain away. Adam was right, a dead Tony couldn't give them any answers, and even if he could, he wasn't all that high up on the food chain, so he couldn't give him the answers they wanted.

After the handle was clean, they left the apartment and went back to the car, Adam speaking softly, "So, do you think I can get a deal on the ASWS if I get an investigation?"

"Nope – sorry, Adam, but business is business."

"Damn."

AN: Heavy on the angst and bloodthirsty natures, but I think I warned that at the beginning. What do you think? Read and Review, please –AR.


	7. Chapter 7

7?

AN: Sorry for the delay – been working on other things; know that this story will end in a few chapters, and probably not in a way that will make a lot of people happy (yes, Xander will still be alive, as will Buffy, but that's all I'm sure of for now).

(Two days later –Sunnydale Armory)

The woman, Candy, as Alex had introduced her to them, was sitting at attention even as his son lounged back into a chair and had one foot up on the table – Adam could see the pure contempt in his son's eyes as his CO droned on and on about patriotism and such and finally got to the point, "We want to buy your patent from you, son."

"Tack on two hundred percent to the highest bid for the system and you have a deal." Adam's mind brought up the figure in a few seconds and his mind boggled at the number – neither his son, nor Candy, would ever have to work again, ever, if the military agreed to that price.

General Walsh snorted at the notion, "You can't be serious!"

Alex gave the general a death's head grin, "Oh, I'm very serious, General – business, after all, is business."

General Walsh looked over at him, "He's your son, Adam – can't you talk him into giving us the patent?"

"No, sir, I've already tried – Alex is a shrewd business man and has assured that we cannot … acquire it … as we normally would, sir." It made Adam want to vomit with the way that his government often did business with its own citizens, undercutting them so much and outright stealing from them, but Alex, somehow, had taken all of that out of play. "A suggestion, sir, would be for us to take this discussion back to Benning, at a later date – maybe there we can talk this out?"

Major General David Walsh grunted at his subordinate's suggestion, "If he ever enlists, I'm going to put him into the worst shit-hole I can find, Colonel – that's a promise."

Xander just gave the old man a grin, "Then I'll make sure to go Marine or Air Force then, sir." With no other words, he stood and walked out of the room they had temporarily commandeered, as the General refused to 'talk business' in the school library, and soon he heard Candy's footsteps behind him.

"Jesus, Xand," she breathed in his ear even as they made their way out of the hallway and towards the exit, "do you KNOW how pissed off he is? He's a friggin' GENERAL for God's sakes, and you just told him to go screw himself!"

He looked over at her, "And your thong is in a knot WHY? After all, he's a General – I thought you only respected Admirals?"

She shot him a glare and, for a second, he felt a thrill of pure terror run through his body, "I do, Xander, but that's not the point! I … I don't want this guy looking too deep into my past, okay? I've done a lot of things and sold to a lot of people, and I'm not proud of what some of what's happened because of it."

He sighed as they went out the door and into the blazing southern California sun, "Okay, Candy, I promise I'll try and be nicer when I go to Benning with them, okay?" She nodded at this as they approached her car, "So, can we stop by my place first? I want to show you this mag I got that has some cool ink in it."

Once they were in the car she smiled at him, "Considering my offer?" She turned the key and the 1968 Ford Mustang roared to life, "I think you'd look good with a dragon tat, kid."

He gave her chest, which was covered in a dark blue blouse that had long sleeves, envisioning the spiraling tattoo that was there, and then looked up into her eyes, "I would think your opinion on dragons is somewhat biased, Candy, and I was thinking tribal art."

She smiled at him as they pulled out of the Armory parking lot, "Trust me, kid, dragons are the way to go…"

(Later – Sunnydale High Library)

Adam watched as his son slowly continued to run through reps of elevated pushups even while Mr. Giles helped train Miss Summers – it still boggled his mind that one little girl had that much power … that much responsibility …

"Xander?" Willow's voice was on edge as his son looked up at her, his eyes curious as she went on, "Where did you get that tattoo?" Willow pointed at Xander's upper right arm, around his upper bicep, and there Adam could see what appeared to be a tribal design, or at least the beginnings of one, there.

Alex, for his part, only went back to doing pushups, "At a tattoo parlor?"

Willow growled and, for an instant, she reminded him of his ex-wife even as she stormed over and grabbed his son by the ear, yanking him up into a standing position, "You can't have a tattoo, Xander! You're not old enough."

He pulled away from his enraged Jewish friend even as he saw his father mask an amused look, "Jesus, Willow, don't do that – I like my ears where they are." Massaging the offended bit of flesh, he went on, "And yes, Willow, I can – it's not like any of those nitwits that call themselves cops are going to arrest me."

"But you still have to deal with your mother," Adam chipped in from the cheap seats, much to Xander's ire.

"The point is, is that I have it, I'm keeping it, and the discussion is over." It was funny, really, how lame that sounded coming out of his mouth, knowing that the issue had just been turned into top-priority. Either way, though, he got off out of the immediate area and went back to doing pushups, at which point his father came over, "What?"

"I want to talk." His son looked up at him and gave him a 'what do you think you're doing now' look, so Adam went on, "You were somewhat rough with the General earlier, son – he's not used to being told to put up or shut up."

"Which is why I think ALL officers should be grunts first," Alex grunted at him as he went about doing his pushups, "it gives them a good perspective of how to deal with people."

"A suggestion is to stow that kind of attitude once you get to Benning, Alex," Adam offered his son, who paused and looked up at him. "Rangers-in-training are bad enough, but mouthy teenagers who have come up with nice weapon systems aren't exactly going to win you many friends."

"I'm not going there to make friends, Adam, I'm going to make sure that nobody is going to do something stupid," Alex ground out. "You implied that the Brass, or at least some of them, know about demons, hell, you told me, but what I am going for is to make sure nobody is going to do something stupid, okay?"

Adam nodded as his son got up again, "Alright, Alex – once this school year is over, we're going down to Georgia, and no, there is no devil there who plays a fiddle."

Xander winced, "That's bad, dad, really bad."

Adam shrugged, "Hey, best I could do on short notice. Oh, and one more thing," Adam told him as he walked away, "you get to tell your mother about the tattoo."

It was official – his biological father is where he got his sense of sadism from.

AN: Short chapter, mercifully short, and I hope to finish this chapter up soon – reviews, please.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

AN: To hurry things along, the season has ended – no big bad, not Acathla, no Buffy deserting Sunnydale. Willow is with Oz, Xander's been verbally reamed out by Jessica, Joyce, Willow, Buffy and everyone else that is female about his now-complete tattoo, save Candy, who has faced only Jessica's ire.

(Fort Benning, Georgia – late May)

"Tell me again WHY I'm being forced to do morning PT's with you and your trained monkeys when I'm not a Ranger, dad?" Sure it had been an invigorating PT session and 3 mile run, but as he wasn't military or a fan of seeing the day before the sun was up, Xander was a slight bit miffed on this morning, this second on Fort Benning.

His father gave him a proud, yet tired, grin, "Firstly, they are not trained monkeys, and secondly … motivation." Xander gave him a pointed look before stripping off his sweat-soaked t-shirt (gods, who knew it was so hot down in the South?) and Adam went on, "A few of the other officers knew you were coming and I wanted to show them that my son was as tough or tougher than their Rangers."

Xander just rolled his eyes and went over to his bag, pulling out a light gray t-shirt, "Then I guess I shouldn't wear this, then." He tossed the shirt to his father as he pulled out some other clothes to put on after he took a shower.

Adam looked at the black letters that spelled out 'MARINES' and then at his son, who, though he was looking away, Adam could tell was grinning, "Only if you have a death wish, son." Even as Alex went to go take a shower, Adam couldn't help but be proud – Alex had kept up with the PT regimen that morning without faltering, while he himself had stopped at just about two miles, and according to the sergeant in charge of the training, Alex hadn't complained once.

Thirty minutes later, they were on their way to his office, where the first of many meetings would take place from – the military had not, in the end, gotten the contract to use or produce his son's weapon, that particular privilege had gone to a European company, but instead Adam had brought Alex in as a temporary consultant to help the beginning stages of the military's new war on demons. This had, of course, been met with several arguments from his son, most of which had stated how little he really knew about the demons, but Adam had convinced him in just helping him with the pitch and the logistics of what would be needed.

Xander, dressed in what he termed as a three-quarter monkey suit of slacks, a dress shirt, no tie and a sports coat, sat in the car and sipped his coffee even as he thought about the idea of the military hunting demons down – the United States was WAY behind in the game, from what he had learned from Giles, as there were at least a dozen other countries and militaries who had demon suppression and eradication teams, not to mention the handful or so of nonmilitary organizations, much like the Council, who did the same job. Giles then explained to him that he was to NOT involve anything referring to magic or the Slayer, under pains of having to be locked in the same room with Ripper, but to ensure, rather, than the job was to be done in such a way that lives would be saved, rather than placed in danger (which Xander took to be a jab at the Council for their antiquated methods).

Once at the base's main offices, and with his son wearing proper identification as a visitor, Adam was sure that things would go well even as the pair went to his office – it wasn't very large, only ten feet deep and some twelve feet wide, with a desk, some file cabinet, a few odds and ends on the walls and a computer, but that was not all that was in the office at that point. She was young, almost six feet, with dark blonde hair done up in a bun, with her dress greens on, the rank of Second Lieutenant on her lapels and shoulders as she snapped to attention.

"Sir! Second Lieutenant Marcia Bones, reporting as ordered, sir." Xander arched an eyebrow as his father took the young woman presented paperwork, but said nothing as he took a seat in a spare chair, one that squealed horrifically, and began to go over the small booklet of notes he had been making over the past few months since his father had pitched the plan to him – types of weapons and ammunition, protective clothing and symbols of a non-magical nature, different locations that demons were known to inhabit, team structures, things that Fly's military training had shoved to the forefront, on top of several other things, like psych evals for everyone from the top Brass to the lowest grunt. Having someone in power with an unstable mind was NOT the way he wanted to get his ticket punched.

Adam looked over the fresh-from-OCS officer's records and orders even as his son began to look over some notes of his own, "Tell me, Lieutenant, why is it that you, someone as green as they come, have been sent to me?"

The reply was crisp, concise and complete bull shit from where he was sitting, "Sir, I was selected because I was considered the best candidate for the job, sir!"

"That tells him absolutely nothing, Lieutenant," Alex chipped in as he went over his notes.

Marcia didn't know who the kid was, so she didn't even bother to give him a look as she snarled, "Stow it, civilian." As soon as the words left her mouth, she winced as her new CO stiffened and glared up at her – this wasn't going to be fun.

"Lieutenant, if you ever take that tone with my son or anyone under my command again I'll make you EAT that diploma in Military History."

She nodded to him even as she felt a presence over her right shoulder, near her ear – the voice of the civilian, the Colonel's apparent son, was cold and calculating as he told her, "Do NOT let appearances fool you, little girl – doing that gets you and everyone around you very dead … if you're lucky." She hadn't even heard the chair make a noise when he got up, even as he sat back down with another squeal coming from the chair.

"Your orders say that you've been assigned to me by the JOC to help with this project, Lieutenant, but also that you have no experience with what we're going to be dealing with." Adam looked up at the young woman and then back at his son, who was looking back at his notes, "Shut the door and have a seat." Over the next hour Adam filled the girl in just what it was they were going to be doing, substituting 'HST' for 'demons', even though he was sure that his son's blood pressure was going through the roof, and never once did the lieutenant blink at anything he had to say until he got to the last point he wanted to make, "And we're doing this under the supervision of my son."

"With respect, sir, what could a civilian know about these tangos that we do not?"

"A lot, considering I've been fighting them for almost two years now, other countries and organizations have been fighting them for centuries, and that the US military is JUST learning about them, Lieutenant," Alex said to her even as he closed his notes and painted her with a glare. "I've seen and done things that would turn your stomach, Lt. Bones, so don't think for a second that you know anything – hell, I barely know anything, which is why I'm helping set up the logistics and skeleton of this project before more qualified individuals are brought in."

Marcia nodded at the young man as his words both stung and made sense – she'd grown up in rural Texas, a good Christian girl, and had gone to Texas A&M on a scholarship, where she had gotten into the ROTC program; now, though, she was being told that 'HSTs' existed, and that the guy next to her was their current expert in them. Never before had she ever felt as unsure of both her own knowledge of the world and the knowledge of her country, "Sir, with respect, what do we hope to gain with this project?"

Colonel Harris looked at her for a second and then turned to his son, "Well, Alex? Care to field that one?"

'Alex', as the Colonel had called him, narrowed his eyes slightly and Marcia felt as if she were being scrutinized slightly even as he slowly spoke, "Optimally, we're doing this to keep people alive and prevent Armageddon from occurring, but also to extend out a hand to the non-volatile members of the group and learn of ways that we can help one another. Other than that, we're a reactionary force, potentially on a global scale if the military learns to play nicely with other countries and independent organizations while not exposing themselves any more than necessary."

The Colonel nodded at her, "Is that a satisfactory answer, Lieutenant?"

She nodded, "Yes, sir, it is, sir."

He smiled, "Good, now we have a meeting to go to – Alex, try to keep your temper, please. Not everyone here is as forgiving as General Walsh."

(Noon – Chow Hall)

The meeting could have gone better, at least in his mind, but Xander had to say that things could not have gone much worse – there had been a group at the meetings that had been hard core into learning about the demons in order to control them, to use them in a military application, and he'd shot that down as loudly as he could, saying how bad of an idea it was. He'd been called a child, an intellectual inferior, and many other things, but he'd pointed out that he had more field time against the things they wanted to 'study' than everyone else in the room had put together, hence why he was there. After all of that, though, and a rather quick shouting match between a few generals, an admiral and some suit-dressed men that his mind screamed 'spook', things had calmed down and he had given the group the notes and outline of what WAS going to happen, and a few suggestions about how to go about them.

Now, though, with the meeting adjourned for lunch, Xander, escorted by Lieutenant Bones, was in the chow hall and being witness to the one thing that Fly was never one for – military chow; today it was spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread, salad and some kind of canned fruit salad for a snack.

His companion, as they walked towards an empty table, groaned, "This is the one thing I DON'T miss from ROTC – sure, they try, but I have yet to see real spaghetti come out of any military kitchen."

Xander chuckled slightly, "Well it's not that different from high school food, so I guess I'm still somewhat used to it." He liberally sprinkled the generic parmesan cheese over the top and carefully ate a fork full of it, swallowing it quickly, "Well, if you shoot it, it doesn't taste that bad."

Marcia just snorted, "Shoot it, bomb it, burn it, doesn't matter." She did, though, take his advice and quickly swallowed the food, surprised that it didn't taste as badly, "So, Alex-"

"Xander." She looked at him oddly, "Name's Xander – only dad calls me 'Alex'. Well, him and Willow's mom."

She nodded, "Alright, Xander … what are you getting out of this? From what you said about how long you've been doing this, you're not even out of high school yet."

He was silent for a minute and, in the back of her mind, Marcia was sure that she had crossed a line of some kind, but then he spoke, "Vampires took my brother from me, turned him, and I staked him." He looked up into her eyes and she did not see the look of a teenaged kid there – she saw what she saw in her grandfather's eyes, someone who had seen combat, someone who had killed, someone … someone who knew they were living on borrowed time, "I got blind-staggering drunk that night and made myself a promise to not stop until the evil demons were all dead or I was."

"HSTs," she immediately made to correct him, but the glare he gave her cut off her correction.

"Like I told the Colonel, don't use that acronym – it's degrading to the intelligence to the demons and humans. You and I both know what the deal is, so let's not use that term," he ate a little more of his spaghetti and then some of his bread, which stopped him – it was REAL garlic bread, the kind that made talking to someone, let alone kissing them, almost impossible. Okay, so maybe the military chefs did know how to make something right, or it was just a fluke, "So, how did you get detailed out to this project?"

She arched a single eyebrow at him, "What are you implying, civilian? I'm not good enough?"

He rolled his eyes at her and, for a second, Marcia felt like breaking the close-by ketchup bottle over his head, "No, I meant what I asked – how did you get detailed here?"

"Applied for Ranger school once I got out, I was denied due to lack of experience, but this came up at the same time so they sent me here." She settled down slightly as he nodded, as if he were also not saying that she was bounced from the program because she was a woman, and went back to eating, "So, what is your stance on women in the military?" Xander looked up at her and she went on, "Do you think they could be in Special Forces?"

"Yes and no. Individuals absolutely could, yes, but all female recruits in general, I think the group has no reason to be there." Her glare came back to him in full force as he raised a hand to stave off her comment, "Look, I know two young women who could THRIVE in Spec Ops, provided they got past their whole Alpha mentality," he added the last part in a slightly quieter voice, but went on, "but that's providing that the military could pull its head out of it's ass and admit capable and properly-trained women into the Special Forces."

She couldn't help but grin a little at him, "I take it you saw the movie too?" He gave her a boyish little grin and nodded happily even as they finished their spaghetti, but she went on after that, "You DO know why they don't let women in Special Forces, right?"

Xander nodded at her, "Yeah, and I understand it, I really do – won't happen for a few generations, but maybe women will be there one day." He took a bite of the fruit from his fruit salad and grimaced as he quickly swallowed the stuff, "Of course in a few generations this stuff may still be edible."

Marcia looked at her own fruit salad and pushed it away, "I thought they had rules against cruel and unusual punishment?"

"Only against abusing the enemy," suddenly came the voice of Colonel Harris, who had a look of disgust on his face. "Abusing your own troops, though, is perfectly alright in some instances." She was out of her seat instantly, about to salute when he waved her off to sit down, "At ease, Lieutenant – we suffer together in this."

They finished lunch together and went back to the Colonel's office, where he left them in order to go have a quick meeting with the General – she looked over at Alex, who was busily scribbling something down onto a notebook and she finally asked, "Do you think there is any way for me to get into Ranger school or Special Forces?"

Alex stopped writing and looked up at her, an eyebrow raised, "Well, short of a sex change operation, the only way that's going to happen is if this project gets off the ground." She gave him a look and he went on, "I'm going to make a recommendation that any and all people involved in this project are to be at least Ranger or Recon trained, if not a badged member, then at least having completed the courses."

She was sure her eyes lit up slightly, "So … maybe …"

Xander looked over at her and narrowed his eyes, "Lieutenant, lets get one thing straight right here, right now – this project is NOT for people who are one-timers or are weak-minded. I'm suggesting enough psych tests and training that means you're either going to die in this project or retire from both it and the military after signing a stack of Non-Disclosure agreements piled higher than your hip – NASA psych training, SEAL training, everything's going to be meant to weed out 99 percent of the people who are suggested. Do you think you can handle that kind of stress?"

He saw hesitation in her eyes – that, in his opinion, clenched his decision even before she spoke, "I don't know."

Marcia was more than a little shocked when he smiled at her and went back to writing in his notebook, "Good answer. If my proposal is accepted, nobody is really going to know what they are getting into when they sign on to this project … and after they do know, they'll wish they didn't."

(1800 hours – parking lot)

"How in the hell did you get them to agree to letting women take the Ranger class?" He looked up just in time to see Marcia, as she now insisted that he call her outside of the presence of superior officers, grab him into a massive hug. His response to being hugged this way, this hard, was as such.

"Ack!"

She let go immediately, blushing heavily even as she heard the Colonel begin to chuckle, letting Xander catch his breath; after a few moments, though, he looked up at her, "Now, try that again, without the strangulation. Please?"

Still blushing, she asked, "How did you get them to agree to let women into Ranger School?"

He shook off the last effects of the sneak-attack easily – he'd been pounce-hugged by both Buffy and Willow before, not to mention that one time by both at the same time, so Marcia's wasn't that bad, allowing him to answer, "I drove the point home that this isn't a kid's game, even though there is, technically, a kid telling them what is going down. They all agreed that at least Rangers and Recon were going to be involved, no regular military, and no civilians in positions of power, like researchers who may run the place." He smirked then, remembering the look on the face of a woman there – if looks could have killed … well, he wouldn't be dead, but he was sure he would have wished he were, "I'm pretty sure that screwed with the plans that a few people had in there, and put me at the top of more than a few shit lists."

"And why did they agree to the women?"

The Colonel spoke up this time, "Well, Lieutenant, my son made it a point to point out that with that much testosterone in the same place, the entire place would probably blow up, so women would be needed to deflate any egos that happened to get out of check." She blinked at the Colonel, who smirked slightly, "While the military has gotten along without the women so far, it may be a refreshing change. Lieutenant, I'm charging you with writing up, by hand, the rules and regulations regarding fraternization between the troops and such, and I want to see them in a week."

Marcia snapped to attention and saluted, "Aye, sir!"

"Good, now, though, I want you to go home and get some extra sleep, Lieutenant, because as of tomorrow you start your Ranger training with my son here along with the new group coming in. Alex," he said, turning to his son, who had a sly grin on his face, "do not wear your 'Marines' t-shirt in the morning."

She looked over in time to see Xander's almost-innocent look, "And would I do something like that?"

She then looked over in time to see the Colonel deadpan to his son, "To get a rise out of the newbies? Probably."

Xander smirked at his father before turning to the Lieutenant, "Have a good night's sleep, Lieutenant – tomorrow starts nine weeks of 'hell'." With that, he walked away with his father towards the car, at which time he finished the line from the movie, "but for some of us, it's not hell – its home."

(Next morning – 0545)

The new recruits ran into the training area for morning PT's, though a group was set off to the side, and the most senior NCO, First Sergeant Michael Greiger, looked over at him, "Colonel, no disrespect intended, but women and children are NOT allowed here, sir."

"The women are a control group, First Sergeant," he informed the man who was a year his senior in age, "and the young man there … is my son – his being here is, for more than anything, my entertainment. He seems to think he's tough – I plan on testing that."

"Has he signed any waivers, sir?" He nodded at the First Sergeant's question and the man nodded back, peering at Alex's chest, "Good, because he may need it, sir, especially if he wears THAT shirt."

Adam wasn't surprised to see his son, Alex, standing at the head of a group of women, wearing the light grey t-shirt that he had told him not to wear, 'MARINES' stamped across the front and with a huge grin on his son's face – oh, yes, the next nine weeks were going to be fun.

AN: Okay, I know, women are not allowed into either Special Forces or Rangers (at least to the best of my and my beta's knowledge, and his father was a Ranger, IIRC), but that's not the point here. Either way, what do you think? Setting up a few things here, and hope to end this story in two chapters – reviews, please.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

AN: Okay, in this chapter (probably another short one) we'll see a few familiar faces (well … one familiar face, at least) and towards the end things in the next chapter we will skip ahead to the end of Season 3 – again, I am asking you to presume that, for the most part, things went as per canon during that skip (any changes that come to mind will be denoted then).

(9 weeks later – Fort Benning, Georgia)

In all, of the one hundred and twenty men who had started Ranger School, only fifty-six had finished, a number that, while seemingly depressing, was actually a little above par for the course – the surprising thing, though, was that of the five women who had started, four of them had finished, and that's only because the fifth one had blown out her knee in week seven, taking a nasty spill down a muddy hill. Of anything else that could be said, Adam had to admit that the girls … no, the women, he corrected himself, that had been chosen were not only tough, but they were double-tough. The only odd thing that could be said about all four of them, though, was that they all seemed to either privately or openly dote on his son, whom had also finished the course – this made Adam want to puff his chest out and say 'that's my boy', but it also brought up some contention between the other Senior Officers of the base. Some said that Alex had been allowed to finish because he was his son, others said that the kid had no respect for Rangers, given that he wore every other shirt in the military (Navy, Air Force, Recon and such) than either Army or Rangers – Adam, however, knew better.

Even as the ceremony to give the men their Ranger flash and appropriate items finished, Adam finished his own private ceremony with the women, his son watching, "Ladies, I have to say that I am truly impressed … and many of my fellow Senior Officers are also VERY impressed with your performance. Now, while none of this is official, there is some talk of allowing women into the Ranger program – if at such time that is allowed, your achievements will become official and you will all take your places in history." All four women, in dress greens, saluted him as one and he nodded before turning to Alex, "Son … I'm impressed."

Alex, for his part, only raised a single eyebrow, as if to say 'Indeed'.

Marcia smiled slightly at this even as she heard Sergeant Sonja Gomez, a short, surprisingly muscular and hardened woman from Arizona, snicker at the look – Xander had butted heads with Sonja almost from day one, generally about him being a 'young pup', and things had finally come to a head before week three when, in the sand pits, both Sonja and Xander faced off. The fight had been long, arduous and completely one-sided as Xander toyed with Sonja the entire time – the sergeant finally made the mistake of letting her anger get the best of her and Xander made her pay the price for it by choking her out. Later, hen Sonja woke up, the animosity seemed to be gone and the pair got along splendidly.

"You completed a course that more than half of the other men did not, and you did so without any kind of formal training – that said, if you join the Marines, I'll disown you." Adam's comment had the desired effect of getting the women behind him to giggle and laugh slightly even as his son gave him a look that clearly said 'don't go there'. When the giggles and glare died down, Adam went on, "Officially, none of this has happened, son, and as of tomorrow you are going back to Sunnydale where you will not speak about anything that has happened here. Are we clear?"

Marcia raised an eyebrow at Xander's perfectly cool, "Crystal, Colonel." She had noticed that the tension between father and son had diminished greatly over the past two months, but there was still some tension there even as the male ceremonies broke up.

Adam nodded, "Good – all of you, dismissed. Orders will be given out at 1800 tonight." With that, they all left for the barracks they had been assigned to – the women had a small, almost tiny, hut-like building to themselves, but Alex had been bunked in with the other male recruits, which had caused some tension at first, but later that tension had been removed after a short, yet brutal fight between Alex and another recruit. Both had been reprimanded over their actions, but while the young Second Lieutenant, one Riley Finn, had been adamant that he had done nothing more than teach a 'snot-nosed punk' a lesson, the fact remained that Finn was still in the program only because four other recruits had kept Alex from breaking both of his legs – Finn was to be watched from now on, carefully.

(Later – Barracks 2)

"Lieutenant, what are the chances of us actually getting accreditation for completing the school?" The woman asking was Corporal Theresa Maloney, a 'fine lass of Irish blood', as she had told them early on, born and raised in Boston that stood five feet seven inches tall, her red hair cropped closely (even though women did not have to do so due to mil-spec rules), was built like a swimmer and had an abundance of freckles on her face and arms, which had earned her the name 'Spots' among the women.

Marcia just shrugged at the question as she continued to pack her gear away, "Honestly, Spots, I don't know – the Colonel has treated us right so far, and I think he's going to do everything in his power to get us that credit. Can't ask for more than that, though – he's only male, you realize."

A sharp snort came from the next bunk over from Sergeant Lilly Wood, a tall woman from Brooklyn – her hair was also cut short, though at an inch all around, and her chocolate skin contrasted nicely with the white of her eyes and teeth as she spoke up, "Normally I'd agree, LT, but with his kid in the mix, I think the Colonel is going to make sure we get the credit we deserve." It was common knowledge among the group that Lilly and Xander had a mutual and healthy respect for one another, namely because she was the one woman in the group that had taken Xander to the mat, hard and repeatedly, in the course of their training. Ever since her oldest sister had been murdered on the subway, Lilly had pushed herself harder than anyone, and they all respected that.

"And if not the Colonel, then Al will," chipped in the final member of the quartet, Grace Ryu, an Asian woman born and raised in San Francisco. She and her twin had both been selected for the Ranger training trial, but Dani, short for Danielle, had blown her knee out a few weeks previous and was currently in rehab after surgery. Grace stood at a petite five feet tall barefoot and had the grace and body of a dancer, but also held two fifth-degree black belts in Judo and Okinawan-style Karate, not to mention had a healthy repertoire of other styles under her belt. The one thing that Grace refused to do was to call Xander 'Xander', she always called him 'Al' and Dani had always called him 'Lex'. "He is an honorable person." Grace was also a women of few words, while Dani had been almost impossible, outside of an op, to keep quiet.

Marcia nodded as the others chuckled, "That he is. I wonder what he's doing right now?"

"Defending our honor?" "Kicking ass." "Packing his clothes." All came at once and then the laughter began again.

(Two hours later - Barracks 1)

"Full House, boys – gimme my money." Groans surrounded him as the impromptu game of poker came to a close – Xander had made more money off of the guys in the barracks in the past few hours than he'd made off of the girls in the previous weeks. Sure, he'd done alright against the girls, but one night Lilly had called for a game of strip poker and he'd left with only his boxers on, namely due to Marcia having an ounce of pity for him (though from what Grace said, next time they played, Marcia's voice wouldn't hold much weight). Other than that, life was good.

They'd turned in their linens and cleaned the barracks top to bottom in a little under an hour after graduating the school and were marking time until orders were given out, which was in another hour – so far things had been relatively quiet, but as Xander's luck would have it, that quiet was broken by a voice over his left shoulder, "Don't look so smug, Harris. Just because you're the Colonel's son doesn't mean you're such hot shit."

"Do you WANT to get busted in the chops and down to a no-rank, piss-ant Private again, Finn?" The snickers around the barracks told Finn that not only did the other Rangers not take him seriously, but that they also had a serious respect for Harris, even beyond the fact that the kid was his their CO's son – he'd humped it through the course with them with no special treatment, him or the women with him, and they'd all passed outside of that one who blew out her knee. "And you're right, Cornbread – the Colonel doesn't have a damned thing to do with me being as good as I am." Smug bastard.

Xander went on to ignore Finn even as he counted up his winnings – Finn had made several VERY inappropriate remarks about the women, his girls as he called them (though both Lilly and Sonja both were adamant that there was nothing 'girlish' about them), and Xander had done what, at the time, seemed appropriate by beating the unholy hell out of Finn. Sure, it had caused a few grips among the men, and had gotten them both into more than a little trouble, but the Sergeants basically looked the other way after what Finn had said and insinuated had gotten around to their ears – if the rumors were true, Riley was going to have to take sensitivity training soon.

Two hours later they were all lined up and were awaiting their orders while he was leaning against the side of the SUV his father had been using – his 'older' girls, as he now took to thinking of them as a way to distinguish them from Willow et al, had all been assigned to the west coast, over by Monterey, a few hours north of Sunnydale, and this worried him greatly. The thought of his older girls being in Sunnydale, let alone that close, worried him because if they spoke with Buffy and Willow, all sorts of things about him could and would come out – this would not be good for him, especially if he came up in conversation.

"Alex, are you ready?" He looked over at his father, who was out of his dress greens at this point and nodded, "Good – we have a lot to discuss, especially about your cover story for when you get back to Sunnydale."

"Let me guess – never did anything here other than watch and talk and inform, never trained, this that and the other?"

Adam gave him a look, "Are you sure that guy who possessed you wasn't a spook?"

Xander just snorted, "No, Fly hated spooks more than he hated no-brain, nutless wonder officers. Speaking of which, how do we deal with Finn?"

(Hours later – Elsewhere)

Her head snot up from the bed it had been on, her lungs heaving as she gasped for breath – that had been one wicked dream, seeing that black girl getting her throat ripped out like that from those guys with the teeth.

"Dana? Are you alright, honey?" She looked over and saw her father standing in the doorway, looking concerned – ever since that terrorist had gotten her and the nuke in the same building, he'd been very overprotective.

"Sure, daddy, just a bad dream." With that, Dana Tasker forced herself back to sleep – she had the feeling, though, that sleep would be little and far between for the next long while.

AN: Okay, people, that's it for this chapter – one more to go, and it's probably going to be the longest of the bunch. What do you think? Reviews, please.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

AN: Before we get too far, I'd like to firstly apologize for the previous incarnation of this chapter – quite frankly, I'm embarrassed I ever convinced myself to actually write down and post that piece of crap. Okay, now I doubt that anyone'll read this one, but here's another go at it … the right way … God help us all.

(Sunnydale High – Library – First Day of School)

"Hey, Xander." "Kiddo." "Al." "Stud-muffin." "Xander." "Xander!" "Good Lord, Xander." He'd been in the room for less than ten seconds and already he could feel the migraine starting to form – for the past few weeks he'd been going over the worst case scenarios that could come up in his mind, ranging from Buffy demanding to be put in charge of an army to his older girls showing up to tease him, and the latter had happened. Someone in the front offices was going to die for this one.

"LT, Lilly, Grace, don't call me that Spots, Buffy, Willow, Giles." Ohhhh, yeah, someone was going to die for this.

Willow stormed up to him even as he put his book bag down, "Mister, WHOareTHEYandWHYisSHEcallingYOUstudmuffin?"

He sank down into chair and smiled slightly, "Willow-babble and yelling – I'm impressed. Last time you tried that you almost passed out into your tapioca pudding." She glared at him fiercely even as both Buffy and Grace giggled, Lilly and Marcia laughed and Theresa snorted.

"I did that because you and Jessie were doing your best to sneak into the girl's locker room!" In the past a statement like that would have made him blush and stutter out a weak defense – now, though, it made him only raise a single eyebrow.

"That was Jessie, not me, Willow – you caught him trying to talk me into his grand scheme to see you and the other girls in your underwear. Trust me, I've seen women in their underwear and it's …" He trailed off as he thought about what he was saying and sighed as Willow glared at him anew, "Crap."

Lilly looked over at Spots, who smiled as they both half-walked, half-sauntered over towards the sitting Xander and took up positions either side of him. Lilly then hooked a single finger inside of her pants and pulled out a band of white cotton, Spots doing the same but pulling out emerald green silk, "Why, Xander, last time you saw us in our underwear you didn't think we looked like crap."

As Willow and Xander both went into having en tandem strokes, Grace huffed slightly, "Leave Al alone! It is dishonorable to act in such a manner!"

Buffy growled slightly even as the woman standing next to her coughed slightly, blushing as she spoke, "Ladies, remember, we ARE in a school? Put them away and tease him later." Buffy stopped growling at this slightly even as the little one whom had spoken up in defense of Xander fished out a piece of blue lace from her pants and winked at Xander before putting it away. Xander's response was to merely whimper in place even as Giles cleared his throat and polished his glasses.

Several minutes later, Xander was able to ask, "Where's Sonja?" Willow glared at him as if he had committed some kind of inexcusable crime and he ignored it while he looked at Marcia.

Marcia shrugged, "Pregnant."

He sighed, "Wonderful. Now, why are you guys out here? Not that I don't mind the fantasy fuel," he went on, idly running his eyes up and down both Lilly and Theresa before going on to Grace, who blushed, and Marcia, "but I doubt your being here is a coincidence."

Lilly chuckled to herself even as she sat into the chair next to Xander, "C'mon, kid, don't get your hopes up about us leaving – we're teachers now."

Theresa copied her and dropped into the seat on the other side of the kid, "It has to do with you-know-what, and we'll talk about it later. Now, though," she went on, leaning over and whispering into the kid's ear, an act that brought a smile to Lilly's face as they all loved to tease the kid, "we find ourselves in need of a guide. You've been elected, kid."

Buffy finally snapped, "Xander, who in the HELL are these hussies and WHY are they all over you?" She got glared at immediately by all of the new women but then noticed that Xander wasn't whimpering anymore, or looking rather sorry – he was looking up at her, his eyes boring into hers, and immediately she wanted to find another desk. The look he gave her wasn't a look she wanted to be on the other end on – it was a cold, malicious glare and even as he stood up and walked over she knew this wasn't going to be fun.

"They are some of the women who made my summer bearable, Buffy, and I will NOT allow you to speak to them in that tone. As for your second question, they are playing – trust me, I'm not that lucky to have four overly gorgeous women fawning over me, and I've never taken advantage of them."

"Not that I would have minded," he heard Theresa says quietly to Lilly, who chuckled softly, both of whom he ignored.

"Now, I expect you to apologize when we get back, Buffy, and if you don't, trust me, if you think I was a real piece of work last semester, you haven't seen anything yet." With that, he turned around and walked out of the Library, the women not far behind him – it struck her odd, though, that they all had a matching step pattern, almost in a cadence, as the doors swung shut and Giles removed his glasses.

"I find myself deeply ashamed of you, Buffy." Those eight words rocked her to the core as he polished his glasses, put them back on and continued, "Here you have verbally attacked four TEACHERS here in less than five minutes, not the least of which is that Xander seems to have befriended them all, and I can't help but wonder what would have happened had Xander NOT been here."

"They were all OVER him, Giles!" Willow's face was beet red even as she stalked in a small pattern, "They're all at least five years older than him, maybe ten, and they're … they're …." Willow let out a slight screech of anger before she dropped into the first chair there and began to sniff, "He's hiding something, and he hasn't told me, and he always tells me…"

"Willow," Giles ventured in carefully, as to not set off the petite redhead, "I do realize that Xander has told you very little of what he did over the summer, but do realize that if he hasn't he probably has a reason not to."

She looked up at him and immediately he could see both her insecurity and her sorrow, "But … I'm Willow – he tells me everything."

"Nobody tells everyone everything, Willow," he told her as gently as he could, knowing exactly what Xander had been doing over most of the summer and almost wanting to tell both girls of what had happened. "As much as you may wish it to be so, it is not in this case." It was at this point that Oz walked into the library and over to Willow, as if sensing her distress and making to comfort her, which she allowed.

He turned back to Buffy, "Now, Buffy, when they return this afternoon, you will apologize to the ladies and to Xander. Is that understood?" She nodded at him and he went on, "Also, I've been informed by the Council that Kendra was killed and a new Slayer has been called…"

(Science Lab)

"I don't believe the balls on that bleached-blonde little…" Theresa growled even as she stalked around the room with her teacher partner Grace, who appeared to be at peace with what had just happened in the Library. When they had been detailed out to keep an eye on Xander, it had been a good thing, with as much as they all liked him, but if they had to deal with that little …

"Calm yourself, Spots," Grace said to her even as a she began to look around the room expectantly. "Al said that he'd talk to us and give us the entire story later on, and you and I both know he will."

This didn't calm her down, "Damn it, Grace, I got out of high school and hoped to never come back, but now I'm TEACHING it! Where is the justice in that?"

Grace gave her a slightly amused look, "Perhaps God has a twisted sense of humor? Besides, if you had bothered to look, Al is in our first class."

She stopped and suddenly smiled, a smile that made Grace begin to worry a little as Spots nodded, "You're right – let's see how much we can tease him." To this, Grace could only sigh.

(English Room)

"So, LT, why is it that the kid is in HIGH SCHOOL, doing what he's doing, without any kind of real backup? Pardon my language, but that's shit and we both know it." If there was one thing one could say about Lilly Wood, it was that she was blunt-spoken and to-the-point and Marcia knew it.

"That's part of what he's going to tell us later on today, Sarge, so for the time being, we're to act like he's just another student, nothing else, and for God's sake, make sure Spots leaves him the hell alone!"

Lilly smirked slightly, "Yeah, she does seem to have a major yin for underage meat. She DOES know he's only 17, right?"

She nodded, "Yeah, she knows – she'll tease him to no end, but she'll keep her hands to herself." Marcia then blinked, shrugged, and amended, "Okay, she'll try."

Anything else that was to be said was shelved as the bell rang to begin school – a new front of their lives was opening up, and it was a front where they could not shoot back with bullets, only bad grades.

(Lunch)

"God, compared to this slop, Benning's food was gourmet," he muttered to himself as he looked at what could have been beef stroganoff or a possum that had been unfortunate enough to step on a landmine and get tossed in with some noodles – it wasn't that it was bad food, it just looked horrible.

"And where's that, Xander?" He looked over and saw Cordelia Chase sitting down next to him, dressed in a nice silk blouse and a skirt, pulling a prepared salad out of her purse and looking at his lunch, "Benning, that is."

"Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the US Army Rangers – my dad's a Colonel there." He opened up a packet of salt and poured it on the 'food', "Stayed with him for a few weeks this summer and I ate at the chow hall on base – can't say I was overly impressed with what was there, but given that they have to feed that many mouths, that often, you can't expect much better. Here, though," he shook his head, "well, I can't say I'm overly impressed."

Cordelia looked at him, surprised, "Thinking of going into the military?"

He shook his head, "Nah – up at 0520 every morning, PT out the yang, eat…" he took up a wistful tone and shook his head, "nope, not for me."

She looked down at Xander's arm, which was exposed by his t-shirt, and saw hard muscle there, more so than when he had left school the previous May, "Working out, much?"

He looked up at her, shrugging, "Sat in on a few morning workouts – running 3 miles a day, every day, on top of the rest of your morning Cals and you harden up, fast." He looked almost as if he were secretly amused by something as he asked, "Why? You thinking of joining up?"

She snorted at him, "As if! Those drab colors, that material, ewww, no!" She heard him chuckle and realized that she'd walked right into one of his verbal traps, something that the pair of them had been baiting one another with for years now, "So, how do you know the new teachers in Science? They seemed to take some kind of perverse pleasure in teasing you."

Xander snorted, remembering the teasing looks that Spots had sent his way and the very apologetic ones that Grace had followed up with, "Yeah, I know them both from Georgia – how and why, I can't tell you, it's part of something I promised to keep quiet about."

Cordelia nodded at this, knowing that when he gave his word to be quiet about something, he kept quiet, "Okay, then what about those two new English teachers?"

He groaned at this and almost slammed his head down into the stroganoff, but given how that stuff stuck to the fork he'd never get it out of his hair, "Yeah, met them down there too – Marcia worked with my father, and why she's here … God alone only knows." He hated lying to people like this, but it was necessary.

Cordelia prepared her salad slightly as she heard her Sheep coming through the line, "You may want to get out of here, fast – according to Harmony, she's going to try and make you her 'boyfriend', soon, so make sure you've had all your shots."

"I suppose it's too much as ask, but has she had all of her shots?" Cordelia snorted out at this jab at Harmony even as he got up, "Thanks for the head's up, Cor."

"No problem, Harris, now go away – we have important things to discuss."

He smiled, "Yeah, I'm sure you do." He walked away even as the Sheep began to call out to him, ignoring them as he put the food in the trash and walking to the Library to meet with Giles.

"Ah, Xander, good, you're here." He walked over as the young man entered the library, handing him several dozen file folders that he had been compiling over the past few months, "These are for your people, sources, and commanding officers." Inside were lists of books, contacts, dates and such that would be most helpful for the fledgling government-funded demon hunting group to make sure they got off the ground well, "Also, I must ask how your … compatriots are fairing?"

"With the school? They're cool. With Buffy … that's another story." Xander walked with him to his office and sat down across from him at the desk, "Marcia, Grace and Lilly, they're good women and they'll probably forgive Buffy, but Spots … Theresa, is the one I'm worried about. She's … well, she's Irish, by blood, and Buffy insulted her."

He sighed, "Oh, good Lord, that's the last thing I need. Is there anything you can do to calm her?"

Xander nodded at Giles' question, "Probably, but don't expect miracles. So, do you know why they are here?"

Giles nodded, "Presumably to get a front-line view of what it is that the group will be dealing with on a regular basis, which is why we will be introducing them to the others later on tonight as both Rangers and military." Xander felt his gut clench and, apparently, it showed on his face as Giles held up his hands, "Don't worry, Xander, Buffy won't challenge any of them, nor will she do anything ill-advised, and most certainly she will NOT know about the project."

It was several minutes later that he spoke again, this time to something pertaining more towards business, "How long do you think it will be before Buffy figures things out?" It hurt him to keep things from his Slayer, bug he also knew that Buffy would be most put out to know that not only was she doing things in an almost archaic manner, but that the rest of the world was using a better group of 'toys' to do the same job and he did NOT want her to get her hands on an automatic weapon of any kind.

"Few weeks, a month at the most, I'd think," Xander replied to him in an almost resigned tone of voice. "What did the Council say about us actually training her?"

He snorted, "Bloody gits, the lot of them, said that under no circumstances would Buffy be allowed to work with these people, let alone be trained by them, as the Slayer is the sovereign property of the Council."

Xander gave him a rather chilled grin, "Oh, is that so? I wonder how well they'd stand up to scrutiny? I wonder what would happen if an unofficial inquiry were launched into some of the Council's financial records – would many of the top officials stay out of jail?"

There were times that he was absolutely proud of the young man, how absolutely devilish he could be, and there were other times he was struck cold by the same trait – in this instances, he was proud, "I doubt many would, Xander – whom do you wish to inform?"

(That afternoon – Library)

In the end, both he and Giles agreed that telling the girls what was going on was for the best – they knew it would be dangerous, but with the non-disclosure agreements they had the pair sign first, once the girls had been made painfully aware of what would happen to them if said agreement was breeched, they told them. Buffy and Willow both sank back into their seats after he finished telling them the truth about the four women that stood behind him, in an at ease position, and for an instant Xander felt like a total heel with the look of betrayal in the eyes of both girls, but he steeled himself and continued on, "They are here as first-hand observers to what we do, girls, and they will be reporting back to their superiors about what it is that we do here – no, there will be no mentioning of either of your … special gifts," he assured them, referring to Willow's own new magical potential and Buffy's Slayer abilities, "and by the same token they will not be subject to any interrogation on your part about what they can and cannot do."

Buffy glared up at him, "And since when are YOU in charge, Xander?"

"Since he's the project leader's son, Buffy," Marcia chipped in from behind him. "Colonel Harris is currently in charge of the development phase of our project, and as a liaison between your group and ours, he's appointed Xander." She stepped up to his shoulder and placed a hand there, "More to that, he's my friend, Buffy."

Willow took this point to mutter darkly, "Oh, I'm sure he is." She blushed a bright red when all eyes turned to her, but she did not shrink back, instead she went on, "I'm sure that you're 'just friends' with the Colonel's son, Lieutenant – what better way to enhance your career?" As soon as she said those words, though, she knew she had made a mistake – sure, all of the women looked mortified and outraged, or even outright pissed off, but the one person her attention was on was totally blank, and she knew that when Xander went totally blank, it wasn't a good thing.

Xander shook off Marcia's hand and marched over to where Willow was sitting, grabbed her by the upper arm in a steel-vice-like grip and physically dragged her out of her chair and to the back of the Library, her protests of pain and being unhanded growing the entire way until he finally let her and pinned her with a glare, "What in the FUCK do you think you're doing, Willow? I know you can be petty when you put your mind to it, but I didn't think you could be a total bitch like Cordy used to be."

Willow jerked back as if he'd hit her, "Wha-"

He didn't let her finish, "What you said in there was COMPLETLEY inappropriate!" He let that sink in for a few seconds before he went on to something he knew would make him feel like a complete son of a bitch, "Contrary to whatever your little dream world says to you, Willow, I am NOT your property – I do what I want to do, see whom I want to see, and fuck who I want to fuck, though that's not relevant seeing as I am not doing that to anyone. You have your relationship with Oz – stop acting like whatever friendships I have with any other female that is not you or Buffy is an affront to your very existence because, personally, I don't mind that you have Oz."

By this point Willow was about to burst into tears, "But … it's true! She's just using you!"

"Prove it." If the question had come from him, he would have delivered it with a little less heat than the question had been delivered with, but as it was Marcia, with Buffy right behind her, who asked the question, there was more than a little anger in the question. "Prove to be beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am USING Xander to further my career, little girl."

Willow stopped crying instantly – Xander could talk to her that way when she really needed to have it done to her, but not THIS … hussy, "I saw how you were hanging all over him, missy, and I KNOW that if anyone doesn't meet my standards they won't be good for Xander … and you DON'T."

Marcia sneered at Willow, "Are you THAT insecure and possessive of him? Do you really think that I care about any 'standards' you have for someone who you think should be with him? Let's get one thing straight right now, little girl, I have no intentions of seducing or otherwise manipulating Xander to further my career – he's my friend, ONLY, and I will not let some flat-chested, manipulative, insecure little know-it-all dictate just whom he can and cannot be friends with."

Willow lashed out and slapped Marcia quicker than anyone could react – Marcia didn't even flinch as she returned the slap in kind, one that knocked Willow to the ground; he was hard-pressed to keep Buffy from attacking Marcia, but when you lock a chokehold on around someone's neck as they launch themselves at another person, they tend to get the point. Buffy, however, did not qualify as most people and she continued struggling against his grip, which he tightened.

Willow was soon on her feet and glaring at Marcia through the tears that were welling in her eyes, "Xander would never want someone like you as a friend! He only wants people who are smarter than him and his age!"

Marcia, fully aware that the rest of the detail was on their way back towards them, decided to pull a trump card, "Why not let him decide? Or do you think he's incapable of making his own decisions?"

Willow opened her mouth to say that she was right but her rational mind screamed at her over a few dozen megaphones to stop and THINK about what she was going to say – Yes, Xander had relied on her in the past, but no less than she on him, and he WAS his own person. This created a quandary in her mind as some of the things he had said came to the forefront – she had Oz, yet she seemed to think that she and Xander would one day get together. That wasn't fair to her or to Oz, and especially not to Xander … and she began to see that they were right, mostly – she wasn't acting like Cordelia, but she WAS acting like Harmony and she WAS insecure, but even though she liked to pick Xander's life apart and rebuild it, she wasn't manipulative (and she wasn't flat-chested thankyouverymuch).

"Let. Me. Go!" Buffy was still struggling in his choke hold even as the other ladies got there and Willow's face scrunched up in the way that told him she was about to admit that at least some of what he and Marcia said was right, but given that Buffy was in a bit of a mood at that point and not getting into a better one, he let her go and skipped back as she turned and snarled at him, "Give me a reason I shouldn't gut you, Xander! She slapped Willow."

"Only after Willow slapped her first," he shot back instinctively, hoping to calm the Slayer.

It didn't work, "She called her a manipulative, flat-chested know-it-all!"

"You forgot insecure, Buffy," Willow chipped in slightly, her shoulders dropping a little, "and I'll only concede to the insecure part." Buffy turned to Willow and wanted to object, but Willow held her off with a single raised hand, "And I have to admit she's right – he's shielded me from a lot in my life, and I try to do the same for him … but this isn't something I can do without looking like a HUGE hypocrite."

He felt a presence over his right shoulder and heard Spots whisper to him, "Is it always so cloyingly melodramatic around here?"

He shook his head, "Nah, sometimes we do this when the cameras are on and really pour it on thick."

Grace spoke from his other side, "So, you're not just doing this for us, Al?"

He looked down at her slightly, a grin on his face, "Would it make you feel better if I said yes?"

She smirked at him slightly, "Actually … no, but thanks for asking." Grace then walked forwards and stood not far from Buffy, "How is it that you couldn't get out of his chokehold? From what Mr. Giles has told us about you, you're an accomplished fighter."

Buffy scowled at the shorter (by two inches) woman, "He fought dirty and he's bigger than I am, and add that I didn't want to break both of his arms and I didn't get out."

Grace arched a single eyebrow at her and looked back at Al, saying nothing – he complied and put her into the same chokehold that he had kept Buffy in, "Observe." With a quick jab of an elbow back into his gut and a stomp of her foot, he hissed and flinched, giving her all the chance she needed as she moved, twisted and pivoted herself into a position behind Al, his arm locked behind his body in a solid hold, "This is how you could have done it – every orange belt with even half a brain knows how to do this."

Buffy growled slightly as Grace let go of his arm and jumped onto his back – he knew this wasn't going to be fun, "How did you do that?"

Grace, from his upper back, probably had an imperious look on her face as she said, "Simply put, I trained." He felt like she had this idea to keep his body between hers and Buffy's, and unfortunately for him it was working with her perched on his back. She suddenly thumped her heels into his sides, "Away with us, Al – we have sparring to do."

Buffy growled, "NOT without me you aren't!" She whipped Xander, with Grace on his back, around and glared up at the petite Asian woman, "Not until you teach me how you did that!"

Grace smirked down at her, "How well you learn will decide what I teach you, Buffy – now, follow me." She thumped Xander in the sides again, "Move!"

"Hnnnngh," Xander grunted out like a donkey, turning and walking away, leaving Willow and the others in the back of the library.

(Washington D.C.)

The man standing in the doorway was a giant among men, and for a second Linda felt both intimidated and more than a little aroused as he peered down at her, as if assessing her before speaking, "Yes?"

She cleared her throat, "Yes, my name is Linda Price, and I'm here to speak with Dana Tasker about her nightmares?" The man's eyes narrowed and she knew that she had said the wrong thing – why did things always have to be done the hard way?

(2 months later – Sunnydale Library)

It had taken a few weeks, but finally things had begun to settle down between the group – Willow and Buffy both accepted that Xander and the women had many secrets that they could not and would not tell them, Buffy accepted that even though she was the Slayer, Grace Ryu (or 'Dragon Lady', as Xander insisted on calling the petite Asian woman due to her surname and VILE temperament, a name that often got him glared at) was by far the more competent martial artist and fighter (barring Slayer abilities), Xander accepted that Willow was NEVER going to approve of anyone he happened to go out on a date with, nor would Buffy or Cordelia (though he had suspicions as to why on the latter two), and Giles had resigned himself to being tortured by four more Americans than normal.

He HAD, though, been the first to recognize Lilly Wood, though, the youngest sister of a now-deceased Slayer, one reputedly having been killed by Spike; he'd learned that the sergeant had no idea as to how her sister had died, only that she had, and he was debating on whether or not to tell her the truth when she found out for herself when he left one of his texts open. She'd grilled him for several hours over who and what 'Spike' was, and he had told her, ending it with the fact that Xander had killed him the previous school year. She had gone to Xander for conformation of this and, at his nod, she wept silent tears and went back to her shared home to get blindingly drunk. He wasn't sure what else happened on that night, as neither Xander nor any of the women would comment on it, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Outside of that, though, it had been blessedly silent as far as the demonic side of the year went … and Giles was more than a little lonely at that – Jenny had been sent to another city by her Romany Elders to do something or other and, while they did communicate by letter and telephone, Giles found that he missed her greatly. Still, they both had jobs to do … and there was a certain aspect of his job that he did NOT want to do coming up rather quickly – Buffy's 'rite of passage', a barbaric ritual that had been resurrected by Quinton Travers recently after it had been tucked away in the blessedly-forgotten realms of memory for well over a four hundred years, and he would be giving her that test very soon, sadly … or so he was thinking until he was confronted by 'Spots'.

Theresa Maloney was many things to many people, but one thing she was to all was a nosey little so and so who liked to read whatever books she could get her hands on … and one of those books had been his Watcher's Diary; she'd apparently read about Buffy's upcoming 'test', then went into the history books and read about the test it self, and confronted him about it. Needless to say, the confrontation was not what one could call cordial.

(Flashback)

"You do this and I'll be there when Xander guts you, my promise to God." Spots slammed the book down on the desk and glared at the librarian through her jade eyes, "It's criminal, it's STUPID, and it's out and out ILLEGAL as all HELL!"

The librarian, Giles, merely looked up at her with a look that said 'tell me something I do not know', "I have my orders, Theresa …"

"Then disobey them! Be a man for once and disobey orders – you KNOW what's going to happen, Giles, and you KNOW how Buffy's going to feel after that." She slid the book to him, "Don't make me tell Xander – if he gets involved … I can't say that you or anyone else involved with survive." With that, she left the Library and headed towards the house, where Xander and the others were compiling a list of things needed for a base in Sunnydale – she needed a cuddle, badly.

(End flashback)

This had lead to him, against his better judgment, advising both Xander and Buffy, alone, of what was supposed to happen with the Rite in a few months – Buffy had not taken the entire affair well and was now, a week later, only just starting to speak to him again, but Xander had been distressingly calm about the entire affair. He knew the young man rather well, or at least he thought he did, and he much preferred it when Xander was openly raging rather than silent – this did not bode well for anyone involved, it never did.

As Xander entered the room, dressed in a business suit and holding several folders in his hands, Giles felt that this fear was well-founded.

"I'd quit the Watchers Council if I were you, Giles – quickly." Xander saw the blank look on Giles' face and handed over the folders, "Several inquiries are going to be starting soon, and these are the lists of people, places and events that are going to be looked into – quit. Now." Ever since he had been told about the tests and all, he'd been thinking on just how dangerous of an ally the Council was and had conveyed those thoughts to his father, whom had sent them up the chain of command, and apparently Command thought so as well after conferring with several outside sources.

Giles read over the files quickly, paling further with each one, and when he was finished looked up with a glare at him, "Are you bloody insane? You intend to GUT the oldest and most prestigious hunting organization in the world's history."

Xander glared back at him, "An organization that has no less than a dozen political assassinations in the past century to its name, almost TWO HUNDRED Slayers in that time, dubious ties to several terrorist organizations and enough money squirreled away to take a good chunk out of the US trade debt. Giles, they are DIRTY and they are going to be taken out by a multi-national investigation. Quit while you can." With that, Xander turned away and walked out of the Library, leaving Giles with the information – he had class in several minutes and couldn't be late, or Lilly would gut him.

(Three days later)

"I'm afraid I have some troubling news to report," Giles said, cleaning his glasses. "The Slayer called after Kendra's rather unpleasant demise has gone into hiding."

Buffy frowned even as he and Willow looked at one another, "Why?"

Giles sighed, "A Master Vampire, reportedly named Kakistos, turned both of her parents and now both she and her Watcher have gone under. I have been told she is on her way here, so we must be prepared."

Willow spoke up next, "What did her parents do?"

"I am not sure, Willow – they both worked for a place called 'Micro Consulting'-"

"Black ops," Xander interrupted, the name triggering a bell in his mind. "I'm not sure who they work for or what they do, but it's a cover for a black ops unit called Omega. Supposedly they had something to do with that nuke that went off in the Keys a few years ago." He was given a few odd looks, "What? Can't I read the newspaper on occasion?"

Willow gave him a look, "They would have been in the paper?"

He shrugged, "Okay, so it was a newspaper from a conspiracy theorist, but still!"

Giles spoke up again, but this time coughing to get their attention, "If I may? With her parents both turned … I fear she will not be in the best of mental stability if or when she gets here. We must be prepared to deal with her as well as possible, which is why I am asking you to make sure that if she does get here to be ready for any kind of attack." Everyone was quiet as he went on, "I must absolutely stress that from what very little was able to learn of her parents, they will most likely be highly trained and proficient with firearms – Xander, is your shotgun still working?"

Xander nodded, "Ready to go at all times, Giles – do you know when they'll be here?"

Giles shook his head, "No, I don't – Linda is very smart, and very cautious, so it could be a day, or it could be a week. I want you and Marcia's team to be ready if it comes down to it." Xander nodded at him and he turned to Buffy, "Buffy, Kakistos is now considered the oldest of all vampires with the Master gone – I want you to start reading on him immediately. He's very smart, and very dangerous." For once Buffy didn't give him any grief about studying and that let him turn to Willow, "Willow … I do realize that you're starting to learn magic on your own, but now is not to the time for you to be experimenting. You are to stop all of your studies and practice only on what we've gone over and that is NOT negotiable."

Willow nodded meekly, but her mind was already thinking of ways to counteract Giles' order – she knew what she was doing! "Okay, Giles – when is Jenny supposed to get back?"

"I honestly don't know, Willow," he said in a tired voice, "but do not think for a moment that her being here will change my order." He looked at her and took off his glasses, "Do not think for a second I won't know, Willow – if you are going to learn magic, you will do so properly and going behind my back won't make things any easier. He did NOT want Willow going down the same road he had gone down as a teenager – he still had nightmares about some of the things he had done …

She quivered slightly, partly out of fear but also out of anger, "I promise, Giles." What right did he have to tell her about learning magic? Hypocrite.

He didn't believe her for a second, and if the man had a brain in his head, neither would Giles, "Can we go now, G-man?" The Briton nodded and he was heading towards the door – he had a phone call to make.

(Ohio Bus Station)

"Honey, how many times have I told you to not play with your food?" If there was one habit that her husband had kept from life into undeath, it was that he liked to play with his kills, even if his 'kills' in life had been a steak or a hamburger.

Harry gave her an almost innocent look, almost being because his face was still 'game on', "But he likes my impressions of the man who played Conan, dear!"

Helen rolled her eyes, "You HATED that movie in life, Harry, and now you love it? Drain him and get on with it – Dana's trail isn't getting any warmer."

Harry just shrugged and looked down at the man who was now crying, "Well, like an old friend of mine said a few years before I ate him, 'Women – can't live with them, can't kill them'." With that, he sank his fangs into the man's neck and began to drink greedily.

She just rolled his eyes – yes, Gib had tasted rather nicely, but sometimes she thought her husband took Gib's brain with him into death.

(Chicago Bus Station)

A hand was placed on her shoulder and a question was asked, the same question that had been asked several dozen times over in the past week, "Are you alright, Dana?"

She slapped the woman's hand away and glared at her, "How many damned times do I have to tell you to NOT use that name? I'm Faith now – Dana Tasker is dead."

Kakistos had found them quickly, according to Linda, and she watched him turn her father first before her mother was turned, and by that point the sun was coming up – it still hurt her to think that her parents were those … things … but she reasoned that Harry and Helen Tasker, or Boris and Doris, depending on whom you asked, were dead and these demons were only wearing their bodies. It wasn't much comfort, but it was enough.

(2 weeks later – Sunnydale)

Marcia watched in abject horror as the scene played out before her – the girl whom had sought out Xander and the 'Scoobies', calling herself Faith, was now locked in a battle for her very soul with a vampire who, reputedly, had been her mother. Not ten feet away, Xander was in the same fight with a vampire which had been Faith's father, and while Faith seemed to be getting the better of her vampire, Xander was doing his damnedest to stay alive.

A week before Faith and her Watcher, Linda, had showed up in Sunnydale and, not long after that, both vampires which had been Faith's parents had showed up – sadly, things took a turn for the worse when Linda was captured that very same evening and her mutilated body was left at the Library the next morning. Faith had been inconsolable, regardless of who tried, and over the next week she had begun to slip further and further away from the group and from her sanity – both Grace and Spots had tried to reach her with kindness, Lilly by toughness and she herself had tried with friendliness, but Faith … Faith wasn't responding to anyone.

The battle kicked up another notch as Faith was thrown into the side of a car, and Marcia would have helped, any of them would have, but Willow, in her infinite wisdom, had miss-cast a spell that had been designed to repel all undead creatures – as hard as it was to get her mind around the fact that magic existed, let alone Willow could use it, it wasn't hard to see the results. The spell now kept THEM away from Xander and Faith, who were trapped within the confines of the spell and Mr. Giles was furiously berating Willow for her mistake.

"I bloody-well told you to NOT bloody learn spells YOU CAN'T CONTROL! Which part of that did you NOT understand, Willow?" His temper had finally gotten the best of him – after two weeks of suspecting that she was blatantly ignoring his order to NOT learn magic she couldn't control, he now had his proof and it was only most-probably going to cost a Slayer and Willow's own best friend their lives.

Willow was in tears by now, "I'm SORRY! How many times do I have to SAY it?"

Pulling a move right out of Ripper's playbook, he sneered at her, "Say it to their corpses, Willow, because they probably won't survive this bollocks-up spell of yours."

"STOP IT!" Buffy ripped him away from Willow and glared at him, "Hey, yeah, she screwed – we deal with it LATER! Cancel the spell, Willow."

Willow was silent for a moment so he answered for her, "She can't Buffy, because she doesn't know which spell she cast and can't counter it." He glared at his young student, "If we all survive this, be warned I WILL bind your powers, Willow – I won't let this happen again." That said, he turned back to the fights in time to see the large vampire Xander was fighting roar in agony.

Even as he clutched his nose, Harry hissed at the boy, "I've taken down tough pieces of shit before, boy, but I have to be honest and say you're one of the tougher ones."

Xander limped slightly, feeling the adrenaline flush through his systems, "Well, as long as we're being honest, I think you're one ugly motherfucker."

Harry, remembering when he had said those very same words to that THING in South America, only snarled back at the boy and dashed forwards, clawing at the boy's armored chest – he had to admit that the kid came prepared. Kevlar body armor, an assault shotgun that had taken out his Master's minions on the hop, even had a blessed machete, but even with all that hardware the kid wouldn't beat him – the kid COULDN'T beat him.

Xander knew he was in serious trouble as he jerked back at the Terminator-look-alike slashed away at the last of his body armor – he made a mental note that, if he survived this fight, he'd start looking into getting body armor blessed; Faith was having all the trouble that a Slayer with a family-member-for-a-vamp vampire could have, and he was stuck with daddy dearest – lucky him, he thought as he lashed out a kick that caught the vampire in the knee, causing it to CRUNCH sickeningly and the vampire to roar as it dropped to it's other knee. Not looking a gift-horse in the mouth, he pulled the machete he'd dropped earlier off of the ground and swung down at the neck of the vampire.

"HARRY!" Faith watched as the vampire that had been her father turned to dust and her mother … the vampire that had been her mother shrieked in rage and went after Xander – she KNEW how tough her dad was, so she figured that the guy'd gotten in a lucky hit of some kind, and she also knew that the guy would pay the price if that vamp got to him.

"Watch your nine, X!" He caught the warning just in time to turn and get broadsided by the vampire that Faith had been fighting, a vampire who looked MAJORLY pissed off at him as she held him by the throat and snarled at him, her red eyes blazing.

"Thanks, Faith," she heard him gasp out even as she squeezed his throat – the boy would PAY for killing her husband. She squeezed harder and reveled in the way his eyes bulged, but not for too long as she felt a sudden inrushing of air and looked over in time to see the shimmering wall of light that had been keeping the rest of the boy's group in check. Said group was now rushing forwards, one of them bearing a pistol and, choosing survival over revenge, Helen dropped the boy and ran away.

Faith watched X gag a little even as Red and B both went up to check on him – G came over and squatted down in front of her, "Faith? Are you well?"

She shook her head at him, "No." He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, one she shook away instantly, "Don't touch me."

"Faith, what's wrong?"

"I'm alone, that's what's wrong, G – dad's dust now, mom's on the run, Linda's …" she couldn't bring herself to say 'dead', "and X almost bought it because your witch over there can't tell her hand from her ass, apparently."

"HEY!" Red got up and stormed towards her, "It worked, that's all that counts."

"You almost got your boy killed there, Red," she snapped back at Willow, standing up and glaring, "so tell me HOW that means you know your shit?"

"She's right, Wills," X chipped in as he got to his feet with Marcia's help, "and I KNOW you didn't know the spell – why'd you agree to Giles' terms if you're going to ignore them?" She could see he was about to blow his stack at Red, and this surprised her – X and Red were like two pages in a book most of the time, but as close as they acted, she could tell this was going to get ugly as Red opened her mouth but X cut her off, "DON'T lie to me, Willow, because you suck at it. You knew exactly what you were doing, and you almost got me and Faith killed – I hope that whatever experience you got out of it lasts, because when Giles binds your powers, I'm making sure they stay that way."

"No! You … youcan'tlethimbindmymagics!" Willow felt her heart stop in her chest as Xander just stood there, his face flat – this did not bode well.

"She made a mistake, Xand," Buffy said, coming to her rescue. "Yeah, it almost got you and Faith killed, but it was just a mistake!"

"And if it had been you, Buffy?" Xander's still-flat voice shook her to the core even as he turned to Buffy, "She's not ready, Buffy – from what I've read and have been told, magic isn't just about smarts, which Willow has plenty of. It's also about WISDOM, and I am not seeing too much of that here." His words hurt her more than she realized they would because, deep down, she knew he was right – she was smart, VERY smart, but when it came to using that smartness responsibly she wasn't very good at it.

Buffy, however, kept pressing on even as both Marcia and Giles helped Faith us, "But if you and Giles bind her forever she won't learn!"

She had Xander there and she knew it – as a Watcher hated it when they were right, so he responded, "Buffy, we shall deal with this later – Xander, help Marcia with Faith." He had a great deal of reading to do in hopes that, if he made Willow sweat enough, she'd come to realize just how badly she had bollocksed up the entire night.

(Elsewhere)

"So, your husband is dead at the hands of the young man," her sire grumbled slightly as his hooves clicked against the concrete floor. "Interesting, so say the least – tell me, Helen, how is your daughter fairing?"

"Not well, sire," she responded quietly, but quickly. "The death of her Watcher has had … unforeseen results. She is on the edge, ready to crack, and all I … we … would have to do is to apply the right amount of pressure n the right point and she would be ours."

Kakistos smiled at the thought of having a Slayer under his control, "Hmm, yes, that will do nicely – Helen, take Trick and show him where your daughter is staying tomorrow evening; we need to ensure that she's … taken care of. What of the other Watcher?"

Trick slid forwards at this, a smile pulling at his lips, "According to what I've read, he is to give the girl her Cruciamentum tomorrow evening – Faith will be alone."

Kakistos chuckled at this, "Ah, yes, THAT piece of barbarism – it's amazing what those humans can come up with all on their own."

(LA – Warehouse district)

He loathed staying in places like this, as it reminded him far too much of his early days with the Council, but after what he had done in order to make SURE that Slayer Summers would go through the Cruciamentum, he could endure it for one more night. After all, he was Quinton Travers, and his word was law within the Council.

It was at that point precisely that the doors of the warehouse they had been shoveled into were blown open and men in black combat gear came rushing in, weapons drawn and trained on him and his wet works team, "What is the meaning of this? Do you know who I am?"

One man strode forwards, dressed in US Army green and wearing the rank of Brigadier General, "We surely do, Mr. Travers, and by order of both the President of the United States and in the stead of officers of her Royal Majesty, I hereby place you under arrest, charged with illegally possessing automatic weapons, intent to kidnap an American citizen, four counts of murder and two counts of indecency with a child." Every weapon that was not expressly trained on a member of his wet works team suddenly turned to face his chest, "Please, I'm begging you – resist."

His wrists were bound as he glared at the general, "I have diplomatic immunity, General, and I WILL see to it that you are reduced in rank over this."

He smiled as the Briton 'stumbled' a little, a stumble aided by a shove to the back, "Well, Mr. Travers, I have some bad news for you." He fished out some papers from his pocket and opened them for Travers to read, "Consider your Diplomatic Immunity … revoked. Get him out of here … and don't make the ride enjoyable."

One of the men looked at him, a grin evident under his full mask, "Gen pop with general notice, sir?"

"No, officer, we need him alive." Never, in his born days, had he ever seen a SWAT officer pout, but he was sure that's what the guy was doing.

Even as Travers was being lead away, demanding to speak to his consulate and for a lawyer, General Hastings made a phone call, "Mr. Secretary? Mission complete – the ass is in the barn…"

(Two weeks later)

She struggled against her bonds even as the thing that had been her mother smiled at her – it had been two weeks since the Council had been taken down, and ever since then things had been going down hill for the group; Xander's friends, the Ranger chicks, had been taken away from the school for 'proper debriefing', G was in jail, and X was kinda in charge of them all while his pops pulled some strings to get G out of jail.

That's when they struck – Kakistos had struck a week after her dad had been dusted and she had been taken, but the last thing she saw was X, on the ground, bleeding heavily as she was knocked out and she KNEW that she was fucked. They'd spent some time together and she was starting to actually like the guy, but now he was leaving her too … just like they had all left her.

"Dana? Honey? All you have to do is say 'yes' and the pain stops." Helen had to admit that seeing her daughter trussed up like a turkey, albeit bent back over a curved surface with her stomach and chest in the air, naked as the day she was born, and bleeding from he repeated lashings she had taken from both Trick and herself, made her feel bad … but only for a second. Her sire had given her permission to turn her daughter, but first Dana had to agree to be turned, and to do that it would take a lot of time to break her – she had her father's iron will and her own streak of pure pig-headedness, and that had lasted the entire two days that she had been working Dana over.

Dana looked up at her, tears having long-since been cried out, and her eyes swollen and red, and she spit out, "Go to hell, bitch!"

"I keep telling you we just need to rape her and that'll break her," Trick chipped in from his spot near Dana's head, his eyes roving her daughter's exposed, raw and bleeding flesh. "I've done it before and trust me, it works."

She glared at the elder vampire, "Touch her and I'll castrate you with a blessed butter knife." He cowed back and disappeared into the shadows, allowing her to turn back to her daughter and trace a finger from Dana's pubes to her breastbone, trailing it through the blood and then bringing it up to her lips to suckle on, "Come now, Dana, don't you want to be back with Family? To have your mother back? To not be all alone?" She could see the faintest glimmer of hope enter her daughter's eyes and Helen smiled – this was going to be fun.

(Sunnydale Hospital)

"Colonel Harris, if you do not tell your son to STOP doing sit ups in bed, I will be forced to sedate him," the resident doctor told him in a very tired tone that made Adam want to both smile and cringe at – Alex was many things, but when you cooped him up where he did not want to be, he was so annoying that you let him to go just to keep your sanity.

"I'll try, doctor, but he wants to be let go – nothing short of that will keep him from annoying you to no end."

The diminutive doctor, one that he was sure had a twin over in Cheyenne Mountain NORAD, glared up at him and set her lips in a thin line, "Tell him to stop or I break out the BIG needles that he's so scared of." With that, she turned and walked away, the staff in the hallways getting out of her way quickly as she did.

He shook his head and walked into his son's room, seeing that the bandages had come off and that Alex had a nicely-healing wound on his upper chest, where a knife had cut him across the upper left rib, "You know she's going to knock you out, right?"

Alex didn't even bother stopping, "I need to get out of here, Adam – I can tell something bad is going to happen and it's going to happen soon."

"I can sign you out AMA, son, but you and I both know that won't change anything – Dana … Faith is missing, and she isn't going to turn up any time soon. Buffy and Willow have both been released already and they are looking for her, but they haven't turned up anything."

"What about Giles?"

Adam sighed, "Being released as we speak, son – he's lucky that he has as many friends in low places as he did, otherwise he'd be in jail for the rest of his life for his crimes as a teen." Alex got out of his bed and Adam could see that any stiffness that his son had, that it was hidden as he walked towards the closet, "How is he going to be of any help, son?"

"I doubt he'd be able to help at all, dad, but he'll be able to help Buffy and Willow focus on their work, which will let ME do my work easier." Xander pulled on a pair of pants and then his shoes, "You asked me how I got information in this town, right?"

"Yes …" came the slow and unsure answer, as if Adam didn't want to hear what else was about to be said.

Xander didn't disappoint, "Well, come with me tonight and you'll find out." He pulled on a shirt and turned to Adam, "Oh, and don't wear anything nice – vamp dust ruins everything."

(Later – Unknown Location)

"You have done well, my childe," he purred to his childe as she watched her daughter's body die, a body that would be reborn into a vampire. "No vampire has ever managed to survive siring a Slayer, let alone one who was her own child in life."

Helen smiled as her sire droned on – if things went right, she wouldn't have to listen to either him or Trick EVER again in the very near future.

(Willy's)

The rat-like bartender shivered in fear as the roar of the shotgun rang in the rafters and yet another vampire turned to dust before the kid and his father – ever since Harris had come back to town in the fall, he'd made sure that none of the vamps or demons in town made him out to be the Slayer's bitch or lackey, that HE was the one they needed to be scared of, and tonight he was reinforcing that point while looking for answers.

"This is NOT a question of IF I am going to get the information I want, boys and girls and things, it's a question of how many of you are going to DIE before you tell me." Harris paced in front of the bar and glared over at him, "WHERE. IS. KAKISTOS?"

"Look, kid, it ain't that I don't want to tell you, it's just the Greek Freak scares me more than you … do…" Willy trailed off as the assault weapon was leveled at his chest and the kid's finger tightened on the trigger slightly, "Kid … I'm … I'm human."

"You seem to be mistaking me for the Slayer, Willy," Adam heard his son say in a dead voice, sending a shiver up his spine as he heard a liquid sound hitting the floor from behind the bar. "I kill things, ALL things, human and demonic, it's the Slayer who leaves you alive."

Adam could literally see the man's will literally break as he scrunched up his face and wailed, "Alright! He's down on the docks, number 13! Don't kill me!"

Nothing in the room so much as twitched or made a motion to breathe as the bartender quivered in fear, but finally Alex put the gun away eyed the man coolly, "Willy, I don't know how many times I have to tell you this, but do NOT make me wait for information – next time you do, I'll string you up by what passes for your genitalia and use your for target practice." With that, his son stalked out of the bar and he wasn't far behind him as the demons let out a collected sigh of relief.

"Alex …" he paused in his question as his son reached into his pocket and pulled out tri-colored grenade of some kind and pulled the pin before hurling it through one of the windows of the bar. Seconds later said grenade exploded and billows of smoke filled the bar … as did screams from some of the patrons, "What the hell was that?"

"Don't you ever watch Monty Python, dad?" He gave his father the most beatific look he could muster at that point but it didn't fool his father at all, "Well, I modified a CS grenade to spit out holy water – it worked."

"I thought I told you to leave the gadgets up to the geeks in R and D, son?"

"And let them have all the fun? Perish the thought," Xander quipped slightly as he and Adam went towards the car his dad had driven them there in. "To dock 13, Batman!"

Adam snorted at his son as they got into the car, "I'm Adam Harris, not Adam West."

(Dock 13)

"Traitorous bitch," Trick managed to get out as his body turned to dust even as Dana / Faith, her newest Childe, tore bloody chunks from Kakistos with a berserker rage that would have made her father proud.

"That's Queen Bitch," she muttered even as he finished turning to dust. She then turned to her daughter, who had Kakistos by the throat, and smiled, "Dana, do be a dear and go put some clothes on – while you DO have a very nice body, we will be going out into public soon."

"Yes, mother," Dana said in a sing-song kind of voice before she proceeded to skip over towards a darkened area.

Helen turned back to Kakistos, who was glaring at her, and she smiled, "I know that this seems a little quick, SIRE, but please tell me you did see this coming from the second I asked to turn my own daughter – if you didn't, then males truly are the inferior of any species."

All she got in reply was a gurgled growl.

She sighed and broke off a piece of the wooden crate that had been used weeks ago to hold the implements of torture the Watcher Dana had hooked up with to, "Oh well – goodbye, Master." With that, she slammed the makeshift stake into the old vampire's chest and watched as his body turned to dust, leaving his skeleton there.

"Not bad – a little overly-dramatic, but not bad." She spun and found herself looking down the barrel of a large-bore weapon and looked over that bore to see the dead eyes of Alexander, her childe's former friend, "Gotta say, Mrs. Tasker, I'm impressed – not many vamps can get over the Sire – Childe bond to dust their sires."

She smiled at the boy even as she noticed the older man over his shoulder covering the darkness of the area with a pistol, "What can I say, save that she's my daughter and women will fight to the death for their kids. How did you manage to sneak up on me?"

He gave her a humorless grin, "I've noticed that most vamps tend to get so far into their work and play that they forget things like remembering to check their six. Good for me, bad for you."

"Bad for you, X," Dana said as she stepped out of the shadows, now dressed in some leather pants and a red halter top, her body still stained with her own blood, though. "Why not join us? We'd make a killer team."

To his credit, his eyes never left her, nor did his weapon, "Sorry, Faith, but I kinda like walking in the sun." Helen smiled at this and he asked, "What're you smiling at?"

"She's right – you'd make a great addition to our little family, Alexander." She raised both of her hands then and smiled, "Of course I would still have much to teach you."

His finger tightened on the trigger just a fraction of a hair, "Like?"

"This." She depressed the stone in her ring and immediately all of the windows and doors of the warehouse on the dock exploded out, but she also immediately moved out of the way as he unloaded four rounds from his weapon in roughly one second, rounds that would have taken off everything from her breasts up, and she dodged out of the way even as Dana kicked his father in the groin and followed her.

Once she and Dana were into the sewers, though, they ran at a double-clip until they reached the fall-back point she and Harry had come up with just after coming to town – it was then that she noticed the disturbed look on Dana's face, "What is it?"

"Something's not right – X shoulda blown your head off when you dusted Kak, but he talked with you; not his style, mom." She thought about it for a second and then looked at her mom, "He's up to something – question is, is what's he up to?"

"We'll figure it out later, honey, but now we have a meeting with a bath for you, and then with the guy behind the scenes here in town." They started away to a low-rent room she and Harry had kept and talked as they did, "He's been around for a few decades now, a century at the most…"

(Sunnydale Library – next day)

"… and that's how it went down." Adam finished telling what had happened the night before, up to and including the fact that Faith / Dana was working with the enemy – the reactions were mixed in that Buffy looked ready to throw up, Willow was shocked, Mr. Giles looked oddly blank and his son, Alex, was furious, but that had been the case since the night before, "Alex?"

"I had the fucking shot and I was too busy jaw-jacking to take it!" Alex was out of his seat and pacing, swearing under his breath in Italian until he came to a stop, "We need to find them before they get out of town, dad – from what Faith told me about Helen, she's smart and doesn't like taking orders." Alex continued to pace and stopped once more, "How soon can you get Marcia and the ladies back here?"

Adam shook his head, "No can do, Alex – Command, in their infinite wisdom, has them sitting desks for a few months while they write up protocol. I can have you a team of Rangers by the end of the week, though, full kit and ready to go."

Xander snorted, "Why not let us blow our head off now? I don't want green-as-their-uniforms Rangers, dad, I want people with field experience and for that I need the ladies back."

His father gave him a sour look, "It's not my call, Alex, and it's the best I can do."

Buffy spoke up at this point, "What are you two planning?" When neither of them looked at her, she began to get angry, "What are you two going to do?"

It was Giles who spoke up next, "I do believe they are going to start open warfare upon the demons, Buffy, in a way that will most likely be rather volatile." He took off his glasses and polished them slightly, "In fact, if Sunnydale is not under martial law within a week, I will be very impressed."

Adam looked up at this point and smiled slightly, "I had hoped to keep that as a last resort, Mr. Giles, but provided I can come up with a convincing cover story it can happen within two days."

Xander looked over at Willow and Buffy, both of whom nodded, and he turned back to his dad, "Gang members on PCP, major drug trafficking in the area, lots of unexplained deaths and the PD is on the take – you've got your reasoning now, and as the investigation goes, we'll get a lot more stuff on the who and what is behind Sunnydale."

Adam smiled and got up, "I knew you got something from me other than your dashing good looks." With that, he walked over to Giles' office and began to place phone calls.

Willow scrunched up her nose, "Doesn't he know you look just like your mother's uncle Sal?"

"Leave him to his dreams, Wills – it's all he has left."

(One week later)

It had gone down better than anyone could have hoped – the Sunnydale PD, to a man, had been stripped of their duty and were being completely investigated by the Federal authorities who were in charge of the city now, and the City Council were also under investigation. Enough evidence had been turned up by this point to bury the entire city government, save for the Mayor, Richard Wilkins the Third, and that is what worried them most of all. He was clean, too clean, and the fact that he was completely unfazed by anything that was found made the group believe that he was the man behind the curtains.

One of the things that had not gone as well was that both Helen and Dana Tasker were both still under the radar, under everyone's radar – aside from shaking the trees and Xander berating himself, there wasn't a thing they could do save to keep looking.

Another thing that had happened was dubious as to how good it was, at least if you were Buffy, Cordelia or Willow – with Xander having just celebrated his eighteenth birthday, one of 'his older girls', Theresa 'Spots' Maloney, had made enough of a nuisance of herself that she was deployed to the 'front lines' in Sunnydale. Not long after that Grace Ryu had also showed up, and the pair had immediately begun to bicker over this and that about Xander, leaving the object of their bickering to often be doing everything he could to always be out on patrol.

Days turned into nights, nights turned into weeks, weeks into months and it was nearly January before anything of significance began to break in their search – Richard Wilkins the Third, before he assumed the office of mayor, had not existed before 1975; this had raised all kinds of alarm bells within the group, enough so that a photo comparison was done by Willow to old pictures of the Mayor, which were few and far between, and soon it became known why.

"That son of a bitch, it's him!" Everyone looked over at Willow, who colored a dark red as she realized what she had said, "Uh, um, that's … oh, boy."

Buffy smirked at the once-hacker-turned-witch-turned-hacker again as Willow's boyfriend, Oz, sat next to the hacker, "What's up? Aside from your temper, that is."

Willow shot her a glare and she smiled back as if nothing had happened, "I found pictures of Mayor Wilkins and his father and his grandfather – they're all the same, visually." She brought the three pictures up side-by-side-by-side and let them all see that, indeed, all three were the same, "He's at least one hundred years old and he founded the city … why didn't we see this earlier?"

Xander looked over from Buffy's shoulder even as Spots and Grace both looked at the screen, "We're idiots?"

Buffy chipped in, "Sunnydale Syndrome?"

Grace chipped in, "You're only civilians?"

Spots looked at Buffy and snarked, "Bleached brain cells?"

It was not a secret that neither Spots nor Buffy got along, and though they often took shots at one another as often as they could, so Xander nipped the brewing argument in the ass, "Either way, we know now. Question is, is what we do about it."

"How about you do nothing about it?" As one they all turned and saw Faith standing in the doorway, smiling slightly and looking a touch pale, dressed in leather and a halter top again, "Well, that's actually supposed to be there's not anything you can do about it."

Buffy pulled the stake she kept in the back of her pants out, eyeing her sister Slayer, "Faith, where have you been? We've been worried."

"Sure ya have, B," the dark-haired young man shot back with a nasty smile before looking at Xander. "Still kicking yourself, X?"

"Let me get to my weapon and I won't be." Xander was moving in the opposite direction of Buffy, but he wasn't looking at Faith – he was looking in every other direction BUT Faith's, "Where's that bitch you call a mother?"

Faith narrowed her eyes and did what came naturally – she vamped out, causing Buffy to drop her stake and Giles to utter, 'oh, dear God in heaven', "Don't talk about my mom that way, X – trust me, she's a real pill when she's pissed."

"Where is she, Faith?" He made his way over to the book counter and reached under it, pulling out his assault shotgun and racking the slide back, chambering a round into the bulky weapon, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

"Mmmmm, I like it hard, X, REALLY hard," Faith purred at him, taking her eyes off of Buffy to favor him, "and mom really wants you to join our little family. She says that the brains you have and the balls you've shown would make us GODS among vampires … and I'd get to sire you. How does that sound?" Without waiting for an answer, she spun around and intercepted the stake B had thrown at her, smiling as she did, "How typical – I saw that coming a mile … away, … B."

Time slowed to a crawl as she realized the mistake she had made and as several things happened at once – B dove off to one side, the others took cover and she moved instinctively as a roar sounded behind her, quickly followed by another, and another, and another. As she dove, she twisted in time to see a slug fly through the air where she had been, and then saw another, and another and another, all of them following her flight path even as she hit the ground and rolled away to her feet.

Time seemed to speed up as she began to run, the roars of the shotgun getting closer together as she ducked, wove and spun out of the way of the slugs that were doing their best to destroy everything they came in contact with, and she was doing it – after all, she was the Slayer … and that's when she felt it.

It hit her low in the back, just above the back of her pants, and she was hit again and again even as her legs cut out from under her, the hits stitching up her back even as she fell. The last thing she heard before the blackness consumed her was a male voice saying, "Forget someone, little girl?"

Xander let off of the trigger even as he saw Faith go down in a heap, his father standing behind her with a suppressed weapon in his hand, a smoking one, "What the …"

Adam looked at his son and smiled slightly, "I wasn't always a Ranger, son."

Silence reigned in the room for several seconds before a very irate British voice, a male one, spoke in a Cockney accent, "BLOODY Effen' 'Ell! Wot've I told ya about firin' off tha' bloody f'ing in me library?" Oh, yeah, THIS was going to be fun.

(Later – Wilkins Manor)

He watched her pace the floors even as he sipped his evening tea, something he had taken to doing ever since the American Military had decided that NOW was the time to poke it's nose into his city and to interrupt his plans – he'd been working for well over a century to ascend into a demon, and he was not going to let a few … MORTALS … derail that plan. "Really, Ms. Taker, must you wear a hole in that rug? It was given to me by my great grandmother."

She stopped and shot him a look that, were he able to be hurt, would have left him with only a few pieces of his torso left – he'd been forced to move his plans up quiet a bit already, and he was now within his one hundred days of invulnerability, which was good as she had tried to kill him four times in the past five hours, "Do NOT presume you can tell me what to do, Wilkins – Dana and I were out of this town when you and your goons stopped us, and it's because of YOU that she's not back yet."

He opened his mouth to retort, but that was cut off by his butler opening the door and looking at him, "Sir, there is a young man with Miss Tasker to see you – he says that it is … urgent."

"Send him in, Alfred, and take the rest of the night off." He put his tea off to the side and stood up, straightening his jacket as he did, plastering a false smile on his face as the door opened a little more to admit both a lose-pants-wearing Dana and a young man dressed in a long black coat that seemed to be all the rage now days, "Hello, Dana, you've had your mother VERY worried."

She snorted at the guy who her mom was working with and looked at her sire, "Sorry, but I had my legs taken out from under me, mom."

She heard X chuckle from behind her, "Yeah, a .45 to the base of the spine will do that, Faith." He walked them in a little further and she stopped a few feet in, X doing the same and turning to the Mayor, "So … who's your surgeon? You're … what, 120 years old, and you don't look a day over 40."

The mayor smiled at him slightly, "I'll get you his name, young man – thank you for returning young Dana here, I'll see that you are … duly rewarded for it."

"Oh, she's not going anywhere, Mr. Mayor – she's my insurance policy that I'm getting out of here alive." He pulled his right hand out of his pocket to reveal the triggering device that he held there and then slowly turned Faith around to show the pair the multiple charges of C-4 he had strapped to her back, and then spun her back around, "There's more strapped to her legs, shaped charges, and I've made sure there's MORE than enough to put his entire wing of the house into orbit." He mentally thanked Fly's Gunny for teaching the troops of Light Drop that, when you DID handle explosives, to be careful, and if the situation allows for it, to blow the target or targets to hell and back several times – this was why he had raided the troops' supply of C-4 and had the pants rigged.

His smile faded quickly even as he saw Helen's face break into a huge grin, "Boy, you do NOT have any leverage to bargain here."

"On the contrary, Richard, he does," Helen fired back at him, "and it's in the form of my daughter. Tell me, boy, what is it that you want?"

"I want to know just what's going on – what are you planning, Mr. Mayor?"

Richard thought of lying for only a moment before he sighed, "Well, really, it's rather simple, young man…"

(Harris Household – later that evening)

"I still don't understand why you don't go to the hospital, Alex," she muttered even as she and Adam patched their son up under the intense scrutiny of Alex's friends and teachers.

"How would I explain fragments of wood, concrete, dirt, necrotic human flesh and C-4 residue embedded in my wounds, mom? That I tripped and fell in a military facility?" She shot him a glare at his sarcastic and flip comment even as someone behind her giggled and he stopped being silly, "Add to that the Mayor probably has people working for him in the hospital and I'd be toast."

Adam looked at Alex, "Can you confirm that Faith's dead?"

Alex shook his head, getting up from where he had been sitting, "No – your team showed up early, didn't follow proper procedure and fucked my count up. For all I know they're all still alive or undead." Alex then turned and glared at the young man in the corner, still dressed in his black clothes and armor, and who looked VERY uncomfortable at that point, "I recognize you, Finn – what the FUCK were you thinking, soldier?"

He could tell Harris senior was angry, but Harris junior … well, Finn remembered the last time he was on the kid's bad side and he was glad that there were witnesses to a potential murder, "We heard what sounded like a scuffle and went in – it was a good call."

Harris junior was visibly shaking as he stalked towards him – this wasn't going to be fun at all, Riley was able to think as he was pulled in close, "If you EVER pull a silly-ass stunt like that again I will not hesitate to shoot you myself." The words were spoken in a level, clear tone, but one that promised worlds of pain if ignored as he was let loose, "Am I understood?"

Finn nodded at him, "Yes, I do, but I still say it was a good call."

"I had a count to take out two of the three biggest threats we have in this town, Captain, and you and your corn-fed cowboys fucked it up – can you GIVE me a reason why I should not be pissed at you?" He was hurt, tired, dirty and hungry and he did NOT want to have to deal with some half-coked, green officer who didn't know procedure well enough to lead a troop of Cub Scouts, let alone Rangers – add this to his admittedly volatile temper and, for a moment, he almost felt bad for Finn … almost.

Adam had to admit he was surprised when Finn spoke up, especially with Alex in the mood he was in, "I can't, but be advised that you are NOT an officer and cannot order me around, civilian, and you can't verbally abuse my troops for something that was MY call."

"He can't Lieutenant, but I can," Adam chipped in, making the young man back down before turning to Alex, "and don't hold anything against Finn's men – it's not their fault they are all from Kansas." Alex snorted at this and went into the kitchen, where his mother had retreated to, leaving Adam alone with Finn, "I do want to know why you went in, Lieutenant – your orders were to wait until Alex was out of the building, to secure him, and to get back to the fall-back point PDQ."

"I'm sorry, sir, but I jumped the gun and went on my gut – it won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't – we're not dealing with humans here, Finn, and my son's group has more experience than we do at this, so for now we're taking their lead and their suggestions to heart. Understood?"

Finn straightened, "Hoo-ah, sir."

"Good, now get back to barracks and write up the report – we'll deal with Alex's mother." He wasn't sure, but he was sure he saw Finn both wince and hold back a grin as he went out of the door to the waiting car outside.

In the kitchen Jessica watched as Alex stood against the wall, his head back and eyes, closed, and for an instant she could see both her son and a very tired, very worn old man – she would admit to anyone that she wasn't sure what it was, exactly, that her husband and son and her son's friends fought here in Sunnydale, but if it did THIS to her son … she wasn't sure if she wanted anyone else to deal with it. "Alex?"

"I'm fine, mom … I'm just tired." There was a tone of pure exhaustion in his voice even as he opened his eyes up, allowing her to see the old, tired soul in there, "Faith's been turned, maybe be dust, the Mayor's up to some freaky shit … and I'm not sure if we can stop it."

Jessica fought her instincts to go and hug her son into tiny little pieces, but she was stopped by Adam entering the room and pulling a cold soda out of the ice box, speaking, "We'll find a way, son – it may take a while, but we'll find a way." He took a drink of the soda and looked at her son again, his eyes narrowing, "You took a big risk going in there without any backup, son – if you were enlisted or an officer, you'd be up on charges … if you were lucky to not get a Section 8."

"Only viable option, dad, and you know it."

Adam shook his head at the almost fatalistic tone in his son's voice, "I'm not hearing this, Alex – tomorrow, you're seeing the head shrinker and that is not negotiable." The front door opened at this point and he turned to see both Chen and Maloney enter uninvited – this worried him until he remembered what Alex had told him about the new 'doorknobs' he's put on the door not long after they had dealt with Tony, ones with little crosses etched into them. "Ladies – may I ask what you're doing here?"

While Maloney didn't respond, other than zeroing in on Alex and making slight clucking sounds as she did, Chen at least remembered that his birds bucked their stripes, "We heard about Al being injured, sir, and when he didn't go to the hospital, Spots decided to check here for him – I came along to make sure SHE didn't kill him, though."

"Yes, is that so?" Xander whimpered at the sound in his mother's voice, knowing that no good could come from it as she pulled Spots off of him and pinned her with a glare and a thick Italian accent, "And what is my son to you, little girl?"

Grace watched Spots turn to Ms. Harris with a glare and open up with a spout of thickly-accented English as she approached Al, "Come on – let's get you to bed so you can rest."

He gave her a weak smile even as Ms. Harris returned fire, "You know, Grace, I'd make a comment about my virtue being in trouble … but I'm too tired and hurt right now." She smiled at him slightly as they left the kitchen and proceeded up the stairs to his room.

"Just be glad it's me and not Spots, Al – she may try and join you in bed, even without your mother's permission," Grace pointed out to him even as they entered his room and she eyed it – it was up to specs and actually clean, something she didn't expect from a civilian.

Al gave her a snort tinged with a groan of pain as he sat on the edge of his bed and took off his boots, "Trust me, Grace, I thank you – she might have killed me."

She graced him with a slight smile as his boots came off and his shirt followed, letting her see the white gauze patches on his arms and torso, patches that would need to be changed by morning her mind chipped in slightly, "What did you learn from this episode, Al?"

He didn't even bother taking off his pants, he just gently flopped back onto his bed, an action he instantly regretted as his ribs and arms protested greatly – he was able to speak again a moment later, "We're totally fucked, Grace – I don't care how you slice it, we're all better off bending over or getting on all fours to take it."

Grace walked over and sat next to him on the bed, looking over to where her face was above his and quirked an eyebrow at him as a grin came to her face, "You're very lucky I'm here and not my sister or Spots, Al – a comment like that would have had you in traction for MONTHS."

His response was a very grown-up one – he stuck his tongue out at her.

They sat there for a few minutes, the voices from the kitchen below coming up through the floor boards of his room and, from the sounds of things, Spots was giving as good as she got, and Xander finally asked, "Why do you egg on Spots like you do, Grace?"

"Hmm?"

He rolled his eyes at her innocent 'hmm', "You can't fool me, Grace – we're friendly, but not that friendly."

She snickered slightly, "Well, Al, you got it in one – I like teasing Spots because she was crushing on jail bait, hell, she even had you down to your boxers in our game of strip poker, all of us in almost less, and you come up with a pair of threes. Trust me, if the LT hadn't been there, your virtue would have been lost that night … several times over."

Any comment he was about to make was cut off as they heard someone walking up the stairs – they looked at one another and grinned, a truly evil plan forming in the blink of an eye.

Spots, completely unaware of what was going on in the room she was headed to, simmered at some of the things that Alex's mother had said about her – she was not some kind of a cradle-robbing witch who couldn't cook to save her life, thus making her 'unable' to marry Alex; she damned well could cook! All of this fled her mind, though, as she found the one door that was closed, squared her shoulders and flung it open … only to stop dead in her tracks at what she saw.

"Full house," Alex said to Grace, who pouted and sighed. What was remarkable about this was that Alex was already out of his boots and shirt, revealing his bandaged wounds, while Grace was only missing her shoes.

She opened her mouth to speak, but what she was going to say was cut off as Grace pulled her top off to reveal that she had gone with a bikini top that evening, making Alex's eyes bug out slightly. What made his eyes bug out was just how very little the top covered – it was the kind of bikini you saw in Brazil, which covered very little of the breast, and while Spots felt her own mouth go dry for a second, she saw Grace's lips turn up into a grin.

"Like what you see, Al?" He nodded dumbly and she made up her mind right there.

"Deal me in," she said, flopping on the bed as well, determined to win.

(Next Afternoon)

"Your son is borderline PTSD, Colonel, with a surprisingly large case of trauma-induced depression."

Adam sighed and grumbled under his breath, "I think that may have more to do with last night's card game than anything."

"Excuse me, Colonel? What was that?"

He looked up and shook his head, "Nothing, doctor – now, about Alex … is there anything we can do?"

The doctor, a short, balding man of almost sixty years old, was dressed in a bad cotton suit and looked rather disturbed about being where he was, "Colonel, to be absolutely honest with you, no." Adam gave him an alarmed look and he went on, "Only time can really help him, Colonel – from everything he told me, he's had a lot done to him, more so than what he's done, and I've also played that game. If HALF of what's on there is true …" The doctor shivered slightly before wiping his brow, "There is no quick cure for your son's condition, as much as you'd like it to be." He scribbled a few things down onto a notepad and signed it, "I don't like doing this, but take this to the pharmacy and have them fill it, Colonel – it's going to knock him out for a few days, but it'll let his body recover a little more before we start his treatments. I'll have a report on your deck in a few hours, so just get him down and rested, Colonel."

Adam took the prescription and nodded, putting it in his pocket, "Thanks Doc." The old man left and Adam sighed – he hated having to give his soldiers, let alone his son, drugs, but this time he had to defer to the expert on the matter.

Forty minutes later he was back at his house in time to see Jessica patching up Alex again, but this time he was complaining, "No, mom, I DON'T need some methyl … methyl … damn it, no Monkey Blood! Has Granny been visiting again?" Adam winced for his son – that shit HURT, but it worked.

Jessica, glass applicator in hand, didn't listen as she dabbed one of the cuts on his arm with it and ignored his howls if indignation and pain, "I don't want you getting an infection, Alex, and that's the end of the discussion." Once she was done, she turned to him and leveled a glare at him, "Where have you been? That Irish trollop brought him back here and wanted to get him back into bed!"

Adam rolled his eyes, remembering the previous night when he had gone in to check on his son and found him, Maloney and Chen on his bed, all half-naked and playing strip poker – he had made the mistake of mentioning something along the lines of 'Chen and Maloney are taking care of him in his room', which had sent Jessica storming up the stairs. Once the two ladies were dressed and gone, she had torn into Alex, whom had torn right back into her saying he'd had a full house, king-high, but that had not deterred his mother, hence him now being home-bound for the duration of the weekend. "Alex, the doc wants you to take these and get some rest – you start your treatments on Monday."

Xander caught the bottle his father threw at him and saw what he didn't want to see – psych drugs, ones to knock him on his ass and keep him there, and instantly he felt like throwing them down the toilet; he didn't NEED drugs, "Do I have to?"

Adam nodded, "Yeah, you do – doc says PTSD and depression can be worked out in time, but you need to rest first, hence the drugs. Don't make be bring Spots and Grace here, Alex – you and I both know they'd have them down your throat without any kind of resistance." Alex tried to give him an indignant look, as if to say, 'no they wouldn't!', but that look faded as Adam just continued to look at his son until said son's head fell in acceptance and he went to get some water.

"I want you to know I do this under duress," Alex told him as he shook out a pill and downed it with a half of a mouthful of water.

Adam nodded, "Duly noted, son, now go to bed, and pleasant dreams." Alex left the room, snorting something about, 'bull, like that'll happen', pill bottle on the counter, and he turned to Jessica, "Jessie … we have a problem."

Ten minutes and one explanation later, both he and Jessica were upstairs and looking in on Alex, who was out cold on his bed, snoring slightly.

Jessica looked up at him, "Do you think this is the right thing?"

Adam hesitated in answering, "I've seen soldiers crack when, if they had gotten help, they wouldn't have, and I'll be damned if I let my son crack because I was afraid to give him drugs, Jess – I don't like it, but I'll learn to deal with it."

(Journal – X. Harris)

Visited the Psych doc today and he said that I'm coming along well – I've been in treatment for almost a month now and I'm actually starting to deal with my problems instead of repressing them, which turns out is the root of the problem … well, one of them.

Apparently not only have I been suffering from PTSD for a while now (ever since Fly's memories started floating around in my head), we all have to some extent, but while the others seem to have found ways to have normal or semi-normal lives outside of Slaying, I haven't, hence my problem. I haven't found a way to release my frustrations in a constructive or a non-destructive way, well, I hadn't, but now it seems that I have – believe it or not, I sing.

…

…

Okay, you can stop laughing now – yes, I, Alexander LaVelle Harris, sing, though I admit I don't sing very well. I pull out a few of mom's old records, ones she kept Tony from destroying, listen to the old Italian opera and try and sing along in the old Italian – when I do, though, I hear dogs howling and do my best to ignore them. Still, when I do sing, it feels like I'm being lifted out of a hole, one I've dug with my own two hands, apparently, and my ability to shunt things away. … God, I've been such an asshole – yeah, I accuse Buffy of not being able to share the load, but here, I am, doing all of this without really relying on anyone else, and I look like a fucking hypocrite because of it.

Uh-oh, Spots and Grace are here – apparently they want a re-match from the impromptu game we had a month ago. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky?

(March 12)

Things have been a little hectic around here as of late – no word yet on if Helen and or Faith were destroyed in the blast, and the newly-returned Mayor isn't talking. Dad's had all kinds of people on Wilkins' ass, but nothing has turned up yet as far as how the guy has survived for so damned long – the troops are starting to get restless and I'm still stuck talking with the head shrinker.

Good news – I won the last card game I had with Grace and Spots … boy, did I win. Won't go into the details as I'm sure my mother reads this, hi mom, but I had fun.

Bad news – Giles has found out just what the Mayor is doing, or is at least planning to do, and if it does come to pass we are so VERY screwed.

More good news – Riley Finn isn't a total jackass or complete incompetent. He's learning, through working with Buffy, that in this town there are certain ways to do certain things and that working with people who know what they are doing, let alone admitting that they know more than you do, has let him grow as a person. Only bad part about this is that he's been making eyes at Buffy as of late – note to self: hurt Captain Cornbread badly.

More bad news – Prom is coming up in two weeks and neither Grace nor Spots are letting me miss it; I've tried going to dad and asking him to order them to leave me alone, but he just gave me this little grin and a pat on the shoulder before leaving. I fear my fate is sealed – oh well, at least I'll die happy, as Cordy will most likely kill me for not asking her to the prom. Mom hasn't been any help either as she's been teaching me in the 'marital arts' and making vague references to either the Irish or Asian cultures – she must be punished. My one big worry is Harmony, though – she's been … persistent, to say the least, and she and Spots get along like Bloods and Crypts.

… Hmm, maybe I should volunteer Adam and Mom to chaperone the prom?

(End Journal Entries)

He closed the book and dropped it onto his desk before reaching over and grabbing his tuxedo jacket – he'd been in therapy for almost three months now and he felt better than he had in a long, long time. According to Doctor Paige, his psychologist, he was clinically 'cured' of his depression, though most of that had come from stress-less human bonding and just thinking happy thoughts, which had gotten the obligatory question for fairy dust use from him, but the PTSD was something he was going to be with for a while longer. Yes, he still jumped at loud, sudden noises, and while he had learned to curb his instincts to attack when spooked or snuck up on (and the bruise on Riley's jaw was almost gone now at that), he was getting better … slowly.

"Yeah, and tonight that may all change," he muttered to himself as he looked himself over one last time in the mirror. He had been told, not asked, that he was taking Miss Theresa Maloney to the Prom by one Theresa Maloney, and after hearing that Grace had invited herself along simply because she wanted to keep the potential for violence down – no good could come of this night … well, that wasn't strictly true. One good thing could come out of it, but he wasn't that lucky.

"Alex? Are you ready?" He grinned as his mother, a chaperone for the night, stick her head into his room, a neutral look on her face, "We need to leave, honey – I have to open the doors."

"Yes, thank you OH so much for volunteering us for this, Alex," Adam said from the hallway behind her, his voice laden with sarcasm.

Xander just gave him a smile that, according to Giles, was 'full of cheek', "Well, as the old saying goes, what goes around, comes around. You volunteered me for a lot of stuff at Benning, so consider this payback."

Adam gave him an offended look even as his mom giggled slightly and gave him a corsage, "Now, now, boys, no fighting."

He took the corsage, "Nothing that'll leave a mark, mom, that's all I can promise." In the back of his mind, though, he was praying 'God? Don't let this turn into a brawl, please?'

(Sunnydale High – two hours later)

Okay, so it had been only a short slap-fight, at best, so Xander wasn't entirely unhappy with everything that had gone down so far – Harmony had come up and tried to claim him as her date, but both Spots and Grace had taken exception to this and had … 'convinced' Harmony to leave him alone; outside of that, though, things had gone well.

"Hey, Xand." He turned and saw Faith and Helen both standing in not ten feet away from him, both dressed up for Prom – damn it, he'd spoken too soon.

"Faith. Helen."

Helen Tasker arched her eyebrow at him, "You don't seem surprised to see us here."

He just shrugged even as both Spots and Grace made their way towards him, a journey he aborted with a simple hand gesture, "Not really surprised by anything these days, actually – how'd you two survive, though?"

Faith gave him a dark look, "Almost didn't, Xand – you cooked me medium-well with that blast and it's taken me this long to heal up."

He gave her a bland look, "Aw, I do believe I shall shed a tear over that." He wiped away the imaginary tear, repressing a grin as Helen was forced to restrain her daughter in both life and undeath, "So, I don't suppose that you two are here to say that you're either giving yourselves up or that you're leaving Sunnydale for good, are you?"

Helen gave him an almost-innocent look, "And if we choose the second you'll let us go? That WAS my intent before we were shanghaied by Dick."

He shrugged, "Not really my call, Doris." She blinked at him in shock and he smiled, "You know, I would have expected you to ask for the name 'Natasha', but apparently it was already taken, according to the files we have now."

Helen growled, "Believe me, I tried for that name." She schooled her features into a mask even as he noticed a group of civvie-wearing Rangers began to get into position, "So, are your men gong to escort us out of here, or are you going to try and destroy us now?"

"They aren't HIS men, Ms. Tasker," Adam said as he melted out of the growing crowd of kids that had started to gather. "They are mine, and I'd prefer to take this somewhere less public."

Helen glared at Adam, "My daughter and I only want safe passage out of Sunnydale and we can bargain for it – we're privy to some of the Mayor's plans, after all."

Adam arched his eyebrow, "And even if I were to entertain this idea, which I'm not, we'd still deal with it outside – let the children have their prom."

Helen nodded, "Very well – come on, Faith, we're leaving."

Faith pouted for a moment, "But I didn't get to dance with Xand."

"Only way you and I dance is if it's me in your ashes, Faith," Xander said to her in a dead tone even as the other Rangers began to disperse the crowd.

Anything else he was going to say was cut off as he was pulled away and Spots stepped forwards. "One side, kiddo – listen, slut, stay away from him."

Xander winced as Faith's eyes hardened, Grace stepping up next to him, "No good can come from this."

Before Grace could respond, Helen stalked over, "Dana!"

Faith looked over at her mother, "But mom!"

Helen, however, just folded one arm over the other and glared until Faith / Dana wilted – this proved to him that, undead or alive, a mother was STILL the scariest thing on the planet.

Grace pulled him away, "Let's go dance, Al – this could get ugly."

Not wanting to be in the area, Xander only nodded and followed her away even as Helen and Faith were lead away.

(Later)

"Sergeant Maloney, what in the hell were you thinking?" She cringed back at her CO's tone even as the dance continued to go on, but then again, so did he, "You almost got into a fight with a KNOWN HST in a public venue – why shouldn't I bust you down to a private and be done with it?"

She gulped, "Sir, respectfully, I was just-" she trailed off and he glared at her some more, but she finally said, "Sir, I was angry that she was trying to take my date from me."

He arched his eyebrow at her, "I realize that you and my son have some kind of agreement, Sergeant, but do NOT think that just because you somehow managed to talk my ex into letting you take him to the prom that you're absolved of your duties. Besides that fact, Chen's gotten in more dances with him than you have, so I'd say SHE was his date."

Theresa growled slightly as he finished, "Bloody tramp."

"I think Sergeant Chen may have an issue with you calling her that, Sergeant," Adam said to the fuming woman.

"Not her, sir, that bloody tramp, Faith!" He looked at her oddly, "I didn't get to go to my own prom because of a girl like her, sir."

"And my son was, what, convenient?"

She shook her head, not paying attention to the young brunette that sudden appeared out of nowhere, "No, sir, he's a sweet kid, kinda fun, too." She then sighed, "I just don't know, sir – I … I just wish that … that none of this had ever happened. I mean, things like Xander losing his marbles, the HST situation, hell, even Faith being turned."

Anyanka smiled nastily – she had been told to stick around the prom tonight and to wait for an opportunity like this, and here was her big chance to truly cement herself into D'Hoffryn's good graces. According to D'Hoffryn's sources, a great many things had been changed because of this guy, Xander Harris, and now things were going to be set back to the way things SHOULD have been, "Don-"

"Finish that word, young lady, I and fear that it will be the last word you EVER try and say." The words were quiet, if not polite, but the knife she felt suddenly laid across her throat, and the burn she was feeling from its edge on her throat, made her not finish the pronouncement of fate.

Slowly, she nodded and she was led away from the pair of soldiers, nobody looking at them until she was out of the building and pushed away, at which point she turned around, "Who the hell are you and why did you interrupt me?"

Rupert 'Ripper' Giles glared back at her coldly and, suddenly, she wasn't so sure about what she was going to do as he put away the knife into his jacket, "Did you honestly think that someone like you could fly under MY radar, Anyanka? Perhaps in another world, maybe even another time, but as of late I've … well, let's just say that I've learned that the sins of the past aren't always so bad to repeat as one grows older."

She shivered, "I've heard of you, Ripper – didn't you-"

"Yes, I most certainly did," he cut her off, his voice now devoid of all politeness and filled with a vast expanse of chilled promise of violence in his voice. For some reason, this made Anyanka all hot and bothered as he took off his glasses and was joined by a dark-haired woman who wore a black, slinky dress, "Be gone from here or suffer."

"Rupert, do tell me that you aren't seriously considering wasting magic upon her? Granted, she's a Vengeance Demon, but why waste the effort?" The woman's voice was sultry, even a touch frosty, and instantly Anyanka hated her.

"Hey! First of all we're Justice Demons, and secondly I am not a waste of effort for anyone!"

Janna Kalderash grinned coldly at her, "Child, if there is one thing that a Kalderash knows, that one thing is vengeance. Leave. Now."

Feeling D'Hoffryn's call, she scowled and then huffed, "Fine." With a gout of flame, she vanished into the other realm, "Yes, Lord D'Hoffryn?"

He glared at her, "You have failed, Anyanka – tell me why I should allow you to live?"

She rolled her eyes, "I was about to complete the wish, but I was stopped by-"

He cut her off with a snarl, "Two lowly mortals who happen to have a touch of power." He came around his desk and grabbed her by the throat, "Such things are not welcomed from my favored agent – perhaps it's time for you to … retire?"

Anyanka, Patron Saint of Scorned Women, began to sweat at this.

(Sunnydale High – moments later)

"Remind me to never piss off another librarian again, okay?"

"Sure thing, Spots." Xander had been relieved of his dance partner of the night, Grace, by Spots just moment before after she had been let go by his father – Grace was now dancing with one of the older soldiers that mingled in the crowd and were not dealing with both Helen and Faith, and so far all seemed well.

(Later that evening)

Buffy looked down at her Class Protector award and then over at Xander, who was being used as a rope in a mini-tug-o-war between Grace and Theresa, and then looked over at Willow, who was hugging on Oz, before she started to miss Angel all that much more.

"Something wrong, Buffy?" She looked over at her date, Riley Finn, and smiled slightly – it was nice to have a date who was normal, even if he had been threatened with death-by-shovel by Xander, demotion by his CO, had been glared at by her mother and 'talked to' by Giles before the dance had started. Needless to say, he had been nervous all night.

She shook her head, "Not really, just thinking on how all of this could have been different, that's all."

He smiled at her even as the King and Queen of the Prom, Larry and Cordelia, danced – oh well, at least she'd had a semi-normal night.

(Next Day)

"You. What?"

"They gave us the information and we let them go when it checked out, son." His son didn't look very good this morning – Adam didn't have the brass or the lack of survival instincts to ask how his night had gone after he'd left the dance with both Chen and Maloney, but given the disheveled look his son was sporting that morning, let alone that he had not returned home that night, told Adam all he needed to know.

Now, though, Alex looked ready to bite off a good chuck of armor from an APC and spit out rivets, "You LET them go? All because their intel checked out?"

Adam's eyes narrowed, "And just what was I supposed to do with them, son? Destroy them?"

Alex nodded, "Absolutely."

"They were American citizens."

Alex snapped at him frigidly, "They're fucking VAMPIRES, Adam! Demonically reanimated corpses."

Adam gave him a cool stare, "I'm sorry if I didn't do things the way you would have, son, but I have other things to consider when I make a decision, none of which involve Grace Chen or Theresa Maloney."

Xander lashed out and grabbed Adam by his uniform tie, hauling him across the desk until they were face-to-face, "Leave them out of this, DAD, and fucking THINK about what you did for about two seconds. You let two vampires go, vampires who drink blood from living humans in order to survive, because their intel on the Mayor checked out? How in the hell do you know they aren't telling him stuff they know about us?"

Adam glared at him, "Do you think I'm stupid? We implanted trackers in them the second they were out of town and they're both in LA right now."

This note, though, didn't appear to appease Alex in his mind at all, as Alex released him and gave him a scathing, yet mocking, reply, "Oh, well let's just think about this, okay? How fast to vampires heal again? Would it even be possible for them to remove these trackers and plant them elsewhere?"

"Not when they are rigged to blow if they ever encounter light again, son," Adam shot back, trying to reign in his own temper. After a few more deep breaths, though, and straightening his tie and uniform, "The Mayor intends to Ascend on Graduation day, son, and we're going to be ready."

Xander arched an eyebrow at his father, "Oh? And how are you going to beat him?"

Adam gave him a smile, "Haven't you heard the old expression, son? 'Peace through superior firepower'."

Xander felt his gut lurch slightly at these words – Sunnydale might not survive this.

(Journal of X. Harris)

Okay, so maybe Adam did know what he was doing – surveillance shows both Faith and Helen are in Seattle now, where the trackers show them to be, and their information on the Mayor has panned out to be true. My only real worry is going to be how Sunnydale is going to survive this – Dad's called in just about everything he can get his hands on, ranging from the new Paladin artie, to Specter gunships, down to a few hundred assault troops that have been brought up to speed on what the world is really like.

Casualty projections show that, if everything goes smoothly, only ten percent casualties, but knowing what I know could happen, I'm preparing for the worst and have sent mom away, Buffy having done the same, and the others have done the same with their families.

Graduation is tomorrow … God, I hope I survive this…

AN: Okay, here's my second try at this chapter – epilogue to come … eventually. R&R, please, AR.


	11. Epilogue

Epilogue

AN: Somebody here asked if Xander and Spots had done anything … well, yes, it's implied, but beyond that … well, I have to stick to the rules of the site. Sorry.

(Graduation Day – Outside Sunnydale)

Adam looked at the buildup of forces and then over at the town before looking at his son, "Are you SURE you don't want to evacuate the town, son? With this much firepower, there WILL be damage to places other than the school and the Mayor."

Alex only gave him a look that said 'oh well' before he went back to looking at the Paladins, all four of them, that were being checked out by their crews – Adam made a note to make sure those things were NEVER unguarded while Alex was around.

The plan, so far, was to let the Mayor start his planned Ascension, as no less than a dozen sniper rounds to the chest and head, ranging from .223 to .50 cal, had yet to put the guy down, but after that for the area to be evacuated of the civilian population as both artillery and ground forces bombed the area back into the stone age. If that didn't work, though, Adam had a FAE bomb (nasty little bastard that was the most powerful non-nuclear device in his current arsenal) on stand-by – sadly, though, such a weapon caused a great deal of collateral damage and there would not be a great deal of time for his troops to get out of the area, so he wanted to not use that unless the situation was absolutely FUBAR.

Alex, for his part, had simply gone with the ideas that had come up so far, but he had gone so far as to make sure of minimized friendly and non-combatant casualties in that he'd made sure that Lt. Bones and her detachment were as far away from California as possible, and he'd kept that promise by sending them back to Benning as new instructors for the new, and officially the first, group of female Rangers. The ladies, especially both Chen and Maloney, had not taken the news well and had appealed through the chain of command to be kept in the area – when it had gotten to him, though, Adam had also turned them down, but with the message of it being Alex's wish to keep them safe, which had ended the argument for all, save Maloney.

Adam smirked slightly, remembering the kiss that 'Spots' had given his son and the promise of 'if you die, I'll find a way to resurrect you and kill you myself' before storming off. Jessica had gotten her nose a bit out of joint at that, and the revelation that anything that may or may not have happened between Alex, Maloney and Chen was, as Alex had put it, 'need to know information, and you don't need to know'.

Xander, for his part, looked at the mobile long-range artillery, wishing he could get his hands on it for a bit, but the odds of that happening were about as low as the Red Sox winning the World Series …

(Seattle, Washington)

A shiver went down Faith's spine even as she slept and dreamed of the day that her Red Sox would win the Series …

(Sunnydale)

Xander reached into his pocket and then pulled out a satellite phone, one that was tied to a very special satellite, and for not the first time keyed in a sequence he had memorized in the past weeks – all he had to do was to hit one button and a pair of loose ends would be taken care of.

He closed his eyes, took a breath and slowly let it out before he pushed the send button, "Goodbye, Faith."

(Seattle)

Outside of an old apartment building, people walked around as they always had, but many of them felt and heard a 'thump' of some kind, but just as quickly as it had happened, they ignored it.

What they did not know, though, was that the unlife of a former Champion, and that of her Sire, had just been extinguished in a fraction of a second.

(Sunnydale)

Adam watched Alex shut the phone down and sighed – Alex had made it abundantly clear to him that if anyone were going to terminate Helen and Dana Tasker, it was going to be him, so Adam had given him the remote to do so. A dozen times Alex had come close to doing it, but this time he could literally see his son doing all he could to force himself to push that last button.

Alex walked away from where he was standing and towards him, "It's done." Adam nodded but Alex went on, "I'm going to grab some more rack time – I'll see you and mom later."

"Sir?" He turned and looked at his subordinate, a Marine Major from San Diego named Wilkins (no relation to the Mayor, though – that issue had been checked over a dozen times), "You have a call on the red line."

Adam sighed, "Thank you, Major." He hated talking to the President.

(Graduation Day – 0700)

Jessica looked over at her son as he calmly loaded shell after shell into large drums that looked as if they fit into the gun he had spent ten minutes cleaning, a gun that Adam was now attaching something to the underside of it, "Adam? What is that?"

"It's a cut-down pump-action 40mm grenade launcher, honey," Adam said to her blandly, screwing in a bolt idly as he did. "I thought that as long as we're going for the gold, why not go for overkill?"

Alex snorted, "I think that was achieved with the Paladins and the FAE bomb you have at ready, dad." Alex stopped loading the drums and looked up at her, "Mom? Aren't you leaving, as in now?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, "Young man, I may take orders from your father, but I don't take them from you."

He gave her a mirthless grin, "That wasn't an order – it was a polite suggestion that can and will be enforced if necessary."

Adam looked first at his ex-wife and then at his son before quietly, yet quickly, leaving the room – his poor ears did not need this kind of abuse.

Twenty minutes later, Jessica was packing her bags and getting out of Sunnydale, under armed guard, and Alex was back to loading his drum mags.

(Summers Home – 1100 hours)

Buffy Summers had been told by Adam Harris to ensure that her mother got out of Sunnydale – as she and Xander had told him at the time, that was easier said than done, especially now that her mother was giving her a modified version of Willow's Resolve Face.

"I am NOT leaving, young lady, unless you give me a good reason I should."

Her mother knew all about the creepy crawlies that lived in Sunnydale, and she had sat in on what would happen at Graduation, but so far, that had yet to deter her from staying in Sunnydale, "Mom, I don't want you to get hurt! If this doesn't work, they are going to BOMB the school with something called a fuel explosive air … no, air fuel … ah, fuel air explosive." Buffy REALLY wished that she either had the charts that had been shown to her about the level of damage one of those things would do, or at least had backup to make her mother understand and leave.

"Buff? You here?" YES! Enter her Xander-shaped cavalry!

Xander saw both Joyce and Buffy standing in the middle of the front room and, for a moment, he wanted to turn around and walk right back out the front door, given the looks on their respective faces – sadly, though, common sense took a back seat this time and he walked in as Joyce glared at him, "Young man, tell me this instant you are NOT going to be part of this … insanity!"

Xander blinked and then looked at Buffy, "I take it you're having a problem getting her out of town?" Buffy nodded and he shrugged, "Eh, had to use a few guards with guns to get my mom to go, so don't feel bad."

Buffy perked up, "Did you bring any with you?"

Xander shook his head, "No, they fear your mom." He looked back at Joyce and could see WHY the troops generally didn't harass the Slayer's mother too often – if looks could kill, Joyce would save the Mayor and life the trouble and do him in right there. "And I fear your mother."

Joyce didn't cut him any slack, however, "And why do you want me out of the town?"

Xander didn't even blink, and Buffy was kinda impressed by that, "Because if this goes to shit, we're going to be using hard-core munitions and ordinance that WILL have area-wide effects, Joyce. In a nutshell Make. Sure. You. Are. Safe."

Joyce glared at him for a moment, then at her daughter, before sighing, "I'm not going to win, am I?"

Buffy shook her head, "Nope, sorry."

Joyce then glared again at the both of them, "If either of you two die, I WILL find a way to bring you back so I can guilt you to death."

Twenty minutes later, her mom was on her way out of town and she was looking at Xander, "Do you really think she meant that?"

Xander nodded, "If one or both of us do die, I think the Olvakian Mayor will have a bigger danger on his hands – our mothers."

There was little she could do except nod at that.

(Graduation – Sunnydale High)

Even as the Mayor began his transformation and the students and their families took the timely advice/order over the PA to evacuate the area, soldiers armed with heavy rifles, grenades, machine guns and such filtered into the stadium all aiming at the growing monster before them. Xander, even as he shucked his gown and shouldered his assault shotgun with under-mounted grenade launcher, had to admit that it was pretty damned impressive to see people get out of the place that quickly and not trample everyone in their way.

The Olvakian demon lurched down and snatched up the only non-military person there, the acting principal, and devoured her in a single gulp even as roars of agony were heard off-site, presumably from the demon reinforcements that they had been warned of by the now-very-deceased Helen Tasker. As it came up, though, there was an almost eerie silence in the entire stadium, the faint light of the eclipse filtering down and glittering off of the weapons that were all raised against the demonic Mayor.

"OPEN FIRE!" The roared order shattered the silence and hell was unleashed in the form of various calibers of solid and explosive projectiles, making a veritable wall of steel and chemicals that all descended on the giant snake-like demon as if it were ordained to destroy him.

The Mayor returned to them a roar of his own as many of the rounds fired just bounced off of his hide while the others made very small, almost bite-like marks, on its skin, skin that healed over rather quickly. It roared again and surged forwards, making a bee-line right for Xander, who shifted his aim up a little even as the shotgun continued to roar it's defiance at it in automatic.

A sudden explosion from the Mayor's side flung it off about ten yards as a RPG few out from the other side and slammed into the Mayor's unharmed side, bringing forth a roar of pain as she watched Xander aim at the Mayor's mouth and pull the trigger on the thing in the front of his shotgun, making the entire thing buck even as he pumped the slide on it and ejected a big, smoking shell. Buffy didn't know what he was using, but it worked as it arced up and slammed into the Mayor's demon body, blowing up and bringing forth another scream as the explosion threw Xander and a bunch of chairs out of the way.

"Get him! Cover fire and get the kid!" Buffy didn't wait for them to respond as she dashed into the blizzard of flying chairs and grabbed Xander's rolling body.

"Xander?" She turned him over and instantly wished she had not – he already looked like one giant bruise and she could see blood leaking out of his nose, his eyes were rolled up into the back of his head and he was unconscious, but alive. He looked like what she would think road kill would look like, but even as she hauled him up she could feel the smoking metal that was caught in his vest start to burn a little, but she didn't care – they had to get out of there.

"Fall back! Artie in-bound!" It was then a mad dash out of the area, with Xander slung over her shoulder, as she remembered just what that meant – those Paladins on the outside of town were firing and big booms were coming.

(Elsewhere)

"They are brave, Father, yet they are foolish."

"True, but children often are, my child."

(Sunnydale)

Buffy was outpacing all of his soldiers, even with his son slung over her shoulders, and he had to admit that while it was very humbling to see this, Adam had to admit that it was rather impressive to see.

"Medic!" Buffy's call came in just over the incoming whines of the Paladin shells, but it was then lost in the sounds of the explosions of said shells in the stadium – great plumes of dirt, grass, concrete and … well, snake meat … filled the air even as the shells continued to rain down like fat raindrops, tearing chunks out of the Earth, Mayor and stadium. Sadly, though, this appeared to do little but to slow the Mayor down … and piss him off.

Adam caught a glimpse of his son's face and instantly cursed, having a good idea what had happened even as the medics pulled his vest off and checked for chest wounds – he'd been leery to give his son the grenade launcher to begin with, knowing that Alex would be in the thick of things, but he had related when Alex had told him that he'd rather die than be lacking firepower.

Several tense minutes later, the doctor looked at him, "He's fine, just unconscious – he's going to wake up with one hell of a headache and be more than a little sore, though."

Adam sighed, "Thank you, doctor." He then looked over at Buffy as even more Paladin shells rained overhead, these hitting the Olkavian demon head-on as the troops continued to trickle in, but these were ones who had not gotten far enough away from the blasts and were woozy, "Buffy, thank you."

She shrugged, "No big." She looked around and saw the troops packing up, "What's going on?"

Adam sighed, "It seems that we underestimated what that thing is capable of – our Paladin shells are the only thing slowing it down right now …"

Buffy nodded, "So you're going to bomb it?" She remembered that part of the planning session and how very apprehensive the Colonel and many of the others were to suggest it. They weren't going to use the FAE, but instead other bombs that, if they missed, would take a good chunk out of the school and cause hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars of damage (something the military wanted to avoid) – sadly, though, things were starting to look they might go that way.

Adam nodded at her, "ETA is five minutes, which means we have about two minutes to get out of here if those damned fly-boys are always ahead of schedule, so get in. We're gone."

(Later)

Xander felt like someone had taken a large, heavy mallet and had beat him in the head and face with it, repeatedly, just for shits and grins, but then he had done something to piss them off and they had stopped holding back against him and had REALLY given it to him. Still, it was several minutes before he realized that, outside, it was quiet … very quiet … TOO quiet, so he went against what his body was telling him to do and got to his feet, albeit VERY slowly.

He was in a tent, still had on his boots and BDU pants, but not a shirt, which was quickly rectified (sadly, though, there was no armor), along with taking a left-behind side-arm – something was VERY wrong if someone had just LEFT a weapon out like that.

He had the weapon out in front of him as he exited the tent and looked around … at nothing – gone, everything was GONE! The town was nothing but a flaming, smoldering, rubble-filled pit, there were bits and pieces of equipment … and people … everywhere, and the area was eerily quiet, "What the fuck happened?"

"Hell has come to Earth, my boy." Xander spun and just barely stopped himself from putting two of his very-limited rounds into the forehead of the … person standing across from him, not ten feet away. He was tall, tanned, wearing some kind of a toga top with a leather skirt, the kind you saw in the old Roman era, and … Xander would be damned if those weren't black-feathered WINGS on his back – he had a non-descript face and matching non-descript hair, but after the past few years, Xander knew that if it looked like a duck, walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, it was a nuclear device just WAITING for you to set it off.

"Who are you?"

The man smiled, "I've gone by many names, none of which are important now, young man – what IS important, though … is that this should not have happened." The man frowned slightly, "What you do not know now is, quite honestly, best for you to not know, but one thing I shall tell you is that the bomb used to destroy the Mayor, the Fuel Air Bomb, should NOT have, and normally could not have, opened the Hellmouth as it did."

Xander felt all of the blood leave his face, "Oh … fuck."

"Indeed – somebody made a very precise and very calculated move in weakening the barrier between this world and the next at the PRECISE moment the bomb went off … and I do not like whom the markers are all pointing to." The nameless man stopped frowning, "There is nothing I can do right now in order to bring your friends back, but what I can do is give you hope that you WILL be having reinforcements coming in within the next six hours."

"But?"

"The demons that are collecting in what used to the school will be reaching you within the next hour." He pointed at the movement now visible in the remains of the town, "Survive, young man, and we'll talk about getting your friends back from the limbo they are currently in."

Xander growled at the being and brought his gun back up, "Who are you and how in the fuck am I supposed to stop them?"

"It shall be done in the same way one Flynn Taggart was able to stop the flow of 'demons' he fought, young man – though superior firepower, grit, determination and more than a little luck." The being smiled at him and began to fade away, "As for my name … you may know me best by the name … Lucifer." With that, the being was gone and Xander was floored.

He shook himself out of it and holstered his side arm – he needed bigger and meaner guns now, LOTS of guns…

(Another Time, Another Place)

"… and that's how it happened. Demons came in, I killed a bunch of them, they got their pound of flesh out of me, and reinforcements came in knowing the score – end of story."

She arched an eyebrow at him, as if to say that he was full of shit, but he shot the look right back at her, "What? You don't believe me? I have the scars to prove it."

Buffy rolled her eyes but said, "Xander, you're weird."

The old man gave her a grin and a chuckle, one that turned into a wracking cough that he eventually came out of, "You are named after one of my best friends, 'BUFFY', and you have the audacity to call an old man like me weird?" He snorted, "Kids today, no respect for their elders."

She chuckled and leaned forwards, kissing the 87 year-old man's wrinkled forehead, "Now, get some sleep, Grandpa Xander – I'll be seeing you tomorrow." She grabbed her bag and left the room, whistling an old tune he had taught her, the tune from Looney Tunes.

Xander leaned back in his hospital bed and sighed, closing his eyes for a moment before snapping them open as he smelled something, "So … you're back."

"Indeed I am, Alexander." Lucifer, still dressed the same as he had been when Xander met him, walked out of the shadows with a sad smile on his face, "How have you been?"

Xander shrugged, "Alone – does that count?"

"I kept my promise, young man – I got you your friends and family back."

Xander didn't want to rehash the old argument they'd been having for almost seventy years – yes, Lucifer HAD brought them back, but they were all dead. Sure, Joyce and his mother had survived, as had his other girls, but … it just wasn't the same, "Why are you here?"

"It's time, Xander." Theresa had gone to death before Grace had, not six months after Graduation day, while Grace had lasted another year in the fight to re-take the Earth from the demons – nobody knew just WHO it was that had weakened the barrier, but it had done it's job and the demons had filled the Earth, almost taking it over, too. Earth, however, had fought back and had shown the demons a thing or ten about fighting dirty, and after ten years they had won back the planet … but at a heavy price. Three billion confirmed dead, another half-billion unknown, and most of North America would be irradiated until the year 13,237 AD, at best estimates.

Xander sighed and looked out over the African plains – the whole Hyena thing aside, he felt at peace there in the wilds of Africa, though they were not so wild anymore with development being what it was, "I think I'm ready to sleep now."

Lucifer smiled and nodded a little, "Then go into eternity, young one – you've done your job." He reached forwards and touched a single finger to Xander's forehead, causing the old man's body to slump and to die.

"You do realize that he will find out just what you did to the Hellmouth, right?"

He didn't even bother to look at the speaker, knowing they were going to be there, "Oh, I would be very surprised if he didn't already guess."

"He'll wade through both Heaven and Hell to get at you." It was not an exaggeration in any sense of the word – Lucifer figured that with as hard-headed and determined as the boy had been, he fully expected to see Xander again one day.

Lucifer then turned around and glared at both Metatron and Her, "Don't you have someone to go tell to build an ark or something? You know WHY I did what I did."

Metatron nodded, "Yes, we do, but what I am curious is why you chose to let him live as long as you did."

Lucifer chuckled even as the medical staff rushed into the hospital, "He needed to raise her, didn't he? This Buffy will be the bridge between the old times and the new." Alexander had found a young African girl in a remote village during his time of self-imposed exile in the plains, one that had somehow brought him out of his apathy, and he had raised her as his own. She had grown up and married, gave birth to her child, Buffy, and gone into the night, leaving Xander to care for the soon-to-be Slayer and raise her as his own.

She looked over at Metatron, who nodded, "But you could have killed him years ago, not wait until she was nearly twenty."

Lucifer sighed, "Fine – I felt sorry for him. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

She smiled brightly at him and reached out, touching his face as Metatron spoke, "It shows that you can be redeemed – join us, Lucifer."

Lucifer shook his head even as he felt the towering fury from Heaven that was the Rage of Alexander LaVelle Harris, who had just learned the truth, "No, not yet – after all, Mr. Harris and I DO have a date now. He's just sworn to kill me, even if he has to be knee-deep in the dead to dying to do it." With a laugh, he banished himself back into hell – yes, his plans were coming along nicely. Soon the Earth would be ripe for his own invasion, and the world would tremble at the name of Lucifer.

THE END.

Well? What do you think? Reviews, please.


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